Seeing is Believing and Vice Versa
by Signy1
Summary: A Russian spy on the island? And one that looks exactly like Gilligan? That's more than nonsensical; it's downright crazy... or is it? The castaways aren't sure what's going on, or who is who, or how much of any of it to believe. Continuation of 'Gilligan vs. Gilligan.'
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: To make the narrative flow correctly, I was forced to swap the order of a couple of scenes; to wit, the tag now precedes the conclusion of 'Gilligan vs Gilligan.' Izvenitye*!

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

"And was there any shiny gold pocket knife?" The Skipper's voice was pitched to its sweetest and most patient tones; that usually meant that it was a good time to run for it. Gilligan's fingers tightened on his blanket until his knuckles went white. He'd have given a lot to be able to run for it right about then.

"No," he said readily. "There wasn't any pocket knife. And I didn't see anyone who looked like me. It was all a fig leaf of my imagination."

The Skipper sighed. "You mean a 'figment' of your imagination."

"Okay. A fig mint of my imagination. But I don't know why I'd imagine one of those. Peppermint, maybe, or-"

"Gilligan."

"Or spearmint, or—oh! Chocolate chip mint, maybe. But fig mint? That would taste terrible!"

" _Gilligan!_ " The Skipper calmed himself down with a visible effort, and pitched his voice back to the 'humor the lunatic' sweetness. "One more time, okay?"

"Skipper, we've been doing this for hours," Gilligan begged. "Can I please go to sleep? I promise I won't be crazy tomorrow… oh, all right." He surrendered in the face of the Skipper's glare; he knew when he was beaten. "Okay. I never saw a guy who looked just like me, and there was no gold pocketknife and it didn't have a death ray and I wasn't kidnapped. It was all just my reflection in the water because I was guilty about the pie so I preventilated."

"Prevaricated," the Skipper corrected. "But I think you're finally cured. And tomorrow—"

Whatever he had had planned for tomorrow would have to wait; the Professor entered the hut, completely entranced with the possibilities of the damaged pocketknife in his hand. The shiny gold one. The one which, it seemed, might once have had up to two hundred functions, and possibly even a laser.

It was nice under the blanket, Gilligan decided, having retreated to its slightly sweaty shelter somewhere around that point. He wasn't coming out. Reality was flickering back and forth faster than he could sort it out—what he had seen was mixed with what he thought he had seen, what the Professor thought he had seen, and what the Skipper had decided he had seen, and he hadn't slept in two days because he had spent the previous night not being kidnapped and not frantically trying to free himself and they had been drilling him with these same questions for hours and hours and _hours_ and all he really wanted to do was stay under the blanket where he was safe.

The Professor left the hut, knife in hand, in hopes that some of the components, including, emphatically, the radio transmitter in the folding spoon, might be salvageable. It would be unfair to say that he had forgotten about Gilligan and his psychological difficulties; he hadn't. But the Skipper had that well in hand, it appeared, and the possibilities inherent in the ruined microtechnology gleamed more brightly than the gold they resembled. He left without looking back.

A shiny gold pocketknife with two hundred functions. Just like the one they had spent most of the day convincing Gilligan that he hadn't seen. Even for their island, with its notoriously relaxed standards of plausibility, that was stretching coincidence past the breaking point. The Skipper looked at the lump in the hammock for a moment, with sudden, ugly doubts beginning to eat their way into his gut, then gently—real gentleness, not the 'run for the hills' kind—pulled the blanket away from his first mate's face.

With no gentleness whatsoever, Gilligan snatched at the blanket and tried to pull it back over his head. The Skipper held on tight, though, and Gilligan struggled with his iron grip with about as much success as he ever had. His sleeves rode up in the process, revealing the raw mess on his wrists. The Skipper's heart plummeted into his shoes, and he grabbed a skinny forearm to examine the cuts, scrapes, and rope burns more carefully. "Gilligan! What happened to you?"

Gilligan gulped. He knew this one. In one breath, he reeled off, "Nothing! Nothing happened to me! I wasn't kidnapped and there was no guy that looked like me and he didn't hit me over the head and tie me up because he wasn't there and I was just prevelocitating with my ego debasement because I stole the pie and the guilt made me see things and I'm sorry and I shouldn't have done it and I'll never do anything like that ever again. Now, please, can I be your buddy again and we can forget this ever happened, _please_?" His voice, which had been scaling ominously upwards, broke entirely on the last word, and he fell silent, breathless, wide blue eyes too hopeless to implore.

The Skipper shuddered. He'd seen that look before, during the war. On captured prisoners. "Get up," he said, gruff with emotion. Gilligan obeyed, mechanically and unquestioningly, with only his slumped shoulders revealing anything of what he was feeling. The Skipper half-expected him to recite his rank and serial number. "Come here," he said, retrieving his shaving basin and dipping some water from the cask. "Let me clean that up a little. Your wrists are a mess."

Gilligan pushed his sleeves back and extended both hands, palms down. The other wrist didn't look any better than the first. "I guess that was from… um… I bet I did it in my sleep! Yeah, that's gotta be it. I was sleeping, and I guess I had some kind of nightmare, and… um…"

"And you tied your hands behind your back, and then fought your way out of the ropes. In your sleep," the Skipper said, dabbing a wet cloth to the worst of the scrapes. "Is that what happened?"

Gilligan looked like a deer in the headlights. "I don't know," he said, tentatively. They hadn't gone over this part of the story before, and he was no longer sure what the right answer might be. "Maybe?"

The Skipper, much to his relief—and surprise—didn't challenge that. He just nodded, and continued washing away the dried blood. After a long minute, Gilligan said, in something much closer to his normal tones, "Hey, you don't have to do that. It's not that bad. I'll just take a long swim in the morning."

"No, I don't mind," he replied. "Might as well take care of it tonight. Bet your head hurts, too?"

"Boy, I'll say," Gilligan said. "It feels like someone's pounding a drum in there, right where he clocked me with the—" He cut himself off with a gasp, and looked up to meet the Skipper's steady gaze, and the fear in his eyes made the Skipper's heart break all over again.

Gilligan was afraid. Of _him_. Dear God Almighty.

After all these years, he could read his crewman like a book. This was not his familiar 'oh, crud, I think I screwed up' expression; there was far more than a swipe from a hat or a chewing out at stake. There was fear, and then there was _fear_ , and the Skipper knew the difference. "You really were kidnapped," the Skipper said slowly. "There really was some sort of… impostor here, with that crazy knife. He was the one who grabbed Ginger, and insulted Mr. Howell. And ate the pie. Not you. You were telling the truth all along, right?"

Gilligan was shaking his head, frantic. "No. No! It was all my disgraced ego and I was being a prevariolator and that pocketknife the Professor found isn't really a death ray and I didn't get tied up, and the Professor said it was all my reflection in the water and he's real smart, so that's got to be what happened. And _I ate the pie._ "

The Skipper thought about that for a minute. "And Mary Ann? You were the one spying on her in the shower?"

Gilligan's eyes widened at that, horrified, but he nodded just as frantically as he'd been shaking his head. "Yes! Yes, I must have. Not my double. Because he wasn't there. So that was me, too."

"Oh, my God," the Skipper whispered. While he wouldn't have put it past the impostor to try any such thing, as it happened, he had never had the opportunity. "What have I done?" He got up, hurried to the door, turned back. "You just stay put," he ordered. "I'm going to get the Professor. I'll be right back."

Gilligan rested his elbows on the table (just like Mom had always told him wasn't polite,) and buried his face in his hands, completely spent. The Professor. He'd bring his medical book, and probably try to hypnotize him, and brew up something awful that he'd have to drink so that he could be sane again, or maybe it was like amnesia and everybody would want to whack him in the head some more, and, frankly, his head already hurt like the dickens, thank you very much, and there would be more _questions_. He wasn't sure he had the strength for another hour of this left in him, but then again, he was entirely sure that he wasn't going to be given a choice one way or the other. And at the rate he was going, the chances were that Mary Ann and Ginger were already sewing a straitjacket in his size. "I shouldn't have tried to escape," he murmured. "I should have just let him zap me with that death ray of his. Then _that_ me could've been the me sitting here, instead of this me."

There was something wrong with that logic, somewhere, but he was too tired to try and figure it out, and his eyes were just closing when the other two returned. The Professor was, in fact, carrying his medical book, but all he did was sit down next to Gilligan and examine his wrists.

"I don't think you have anything to worry about," he said, soothingly. "The abrasions are completely superficial."

"Glad _you_ think so. It doesn't seem all that super to me," he replied.

"Not super. Superficial. It means they're not serious."

"Oh. Yeah, I know they're not serious. I'll just take a long swim tomorrow and the salt water will fix me up in no time."

"That sounds like an admirably efficient plan of action. Seawater has been used as a crude antiseptic for centuries, and swimming is excellent cardiovascular exercise."

He nodded sleepily. "But that's good, right?"

"That's right," he said. "Gilligan, can I ask you a question about that pocketknife I found?"

"Okay, P'fessor. What is it?"

"You said that there was a laser capability. Do you have any idea which attachment might have housed that?"

"Well, he was pointing the corkscrew at me, so that's probably it," he answered without thinking. His half-shut eyes sprang open as he felt the trap closing around him, and one last surge of adrenaline sent his pulse racing. "But he wasn't there! He was just my reflection in the water. So that knife you found, the corkscrew's just a corkscrew. Not a death ray. Because he wasn't there. Right?"

The Professor just nodded. "Well. It's not important now, anyway. Why don't you get some sleep and we'll commence running experiments on it in the morning?"

Gilligan looked warily to the Skipper, who nodded. "Hit the sack. The Professor's right; it's been a long day."

Shooting them both nervous glances, obviously expecting the order to be countermanded at any moment, he got up from the table and back into his hammock, clutching the blanket like a lifeline. The other two left the hut.

"What's going on here, Professor?" The Skipper asked the question, but only for form's sake. He already knew the answer as well as the Professor did. But someone needed to say it aloud, and it wasn't going to be him.

"Given the indubitable existence of this pocketknife, I believe that some sort of spy, or agent—the instrument's original possessor—was, for whatever reason, here, impersonating Gilligan, for at least the last day or two. Our Gilligan, the real one, was obviously held prisoner for at least part of that time, resulting in the injuries to his wrists," the Professor said. That was the easy part. "The injuries to his psyche are directly attributable to both the stress of that incarceration and our subsequent refusal to entertain the possibility of either his veracity or his sanity."

The Skipper blinked. The Professor pretty much always sounded like he'd swallowed a dictionary, with a thesaurus for dessert, but this time he sounded like he was hiding behind all of those fifty-cent words. He didn't want to say it, either.

But he did. "Simply put, Skipper, between the trauma of the original event and our insistence on a version of events directly contradictory to his lived experiences, he has been forced into a state of extreme suggestibility. He'll agree to anything, confess to anything, say anything he thinks we want to hear. To be blunt, between the impostor and ourselves, we've tortured him into submission."

The Skipper closed his eyes for a moment. "Yeah. I know. I saw the same thing happen once. After Pearl Harbor," he said, and he didn't elaborate.

The Professor didn't ask for details. He didn't really want to know. "Psychological torture is no less effective than the physical variety. I know a little something about it, and sleep deprivation, from which I believe he is currently suffering, is a potent tactic. And prolonged questioning of the sort we've employed is another."

"But what can we _do_ about it, Professor? You saw how he looked at me! I can't leave him like that!"

"For now? Let him sleep. In the meantime, I'll have a look through my books and see if I can find anything of use," the Professor said.

The Skipper's frustration—and no small amount of guilt—were not hard to read. The Professor put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Keeping his own frustration—and guilt—out of his voice as best he could, he said, "Skipper, you can't blame yourself. We were only trying to help him, and there was no reason to believe a fantastic story about an evil doppelganger."

He shook his head. "I _should_ have believed him. Whatever knuckleheaded thing he does, he's always honest about it, and doesn't make up crazy excuses. I just let myself get so worked up over a lousy piece of pie that I… I… Some friend I am!"

"Skipper, getting upset isn't going to help anything. Look. Get some sleep yourself. We'll sort everything out in the morning. Gilligan will be fine. He's extremely resilient, and we've been through worse than this." The Professor was perfectly well aware that his fellow castaways had a tendency to take his pronouncements literally and at face value; if he told them that something would be so, they didn't often argue or disbelieve. He wished that he had their faith in his infallibility.

OoOoOoO

The next morning, as the sun peeked shyly over the horizon, the Skipper awoke to the less-than-reassuring sight of an empty hammock dangling above him. His heart in his throat, he left the hut, telling himself that there was no reason to panic; the younger man had probably just slipped out for that swim he'd been talking about. Or use the head. Or something. Nothing to worry about. He wished that he were either a better liar or more gullible.

The fresh water trough had been topped up. And there was a bowl full of mangoes on the table that had not been there the night before. He stood there, twisting his cap in his hands, trying to decide where to look first, when Gilligan himself emerged from the jungle with a large bunch of bananas.

"Good morning, Gilligan," he said.

"Good morning, Skipper," he replied. He did not look appreciably less nervous than he had the night before. "Um… want a banana?"

"Sure," the Skipper said, taking the bunch and breaking one off. "Thanks. How're the wrists?"

Gilligan looked at his hands as though he expected them to do something. "Oh, just fine," he said, edging away. "I'm just gonna go… um… collect some more firewood," he babbled. "Yeah, that's it—firewood. Mary Ann can't make any breakfast if there isn't enough firewood, and everyone will be awful sore if there isn't any breakfast. So, um, I'll see you later—"

He turned to escape, but the Skipper had a handful of shirt by that time, and effortlessly reeled him back to the table. Gilligan slumped again, no fight left in him, and sat down, stared at the tabletop.

"So," the Skipper said after a while. "I… well, I think I owe you an apology."

"Huh? What for?"

"For not believing you about the whole crazy business with the pie and your double and all the rest of it. I know you better than that; you don't lie, and especially not when it's important. I'm sorry, little buddy."

He looked up at that, desperate hope in his eyes. And completely ignored the first two sentences in favor of what the Skipper would have assumed was the least relevant part of the apology. "So… I am your little buddy again? For real? Not 'former' anymore?"

"What? Of course you are! I never meant that 'former' bilge, anyway," the Skipper said. He had forgotten having said that, and, frankly, he hadn't really needed another reason to hate himself.

Gilligan let out a breath he hadn't noticed he was holding. "Oh, boy, am I glad to hear that," he said.

The Skipper sighed. "I really did a number on you, didn't I? I'm sorry. I should have believed you from the get-go. I just got so mad when you—no, not you. Him, whoever he was. Well, he was talking like he blamed me for the shipwreck, and I just got so upset I couldn't think straight."

Gilligan's mouth fell open. "And you thought that was me? You thought that I'd ever in a million years think the wreck was your fault?" _Now_ he sounded hurt. "Wow, some rotten friend I must be."

The Skipper shook his head. "That's just it, little buddy—you're _not_. You're probably the one person on the planet who's never thought I was to blame. Everyone else has… and that includes me," he admitted. "I didn't realize how much I depended on that until that… impostor, or whatever, pulled it out from under me."

"Oh," Gilligan said quietly. "I get it. So if I really had gone nuts, then anything I said about the wreck being your fault was just more crazy talk."

"I guess so," the Skipper said. Psychology wasn't exactly his strong suit. "All I know is that I should have believed you in the first place, and none of this would have happened. I'll know better for next time."

Unexpectedly, Gilligan laughed a bit at that. There was no humor in it. "No, you won't, Skipper. That's just it, see?" He smiled, and somehow it was the saddest the Skipper had ever seen him look. "Remember when I saw the headhunter, and you thought I was losing it? Or when I saw the gorilla, or the jungle boy, or the ghost? Nobody ever listens to anything I say; you guys always think I'm lying, or I'm crazy, or just too dumb to know what I'm talking about. I could come tell you guys that water is wet and nobody would believe me. That's not gonna change, and you know it as well as I do." He shrugged. "I've got stuff to do. I'll see you later."

He stood up, flicked his fingers to his temple in a cursory salute, and left, ambling towards the lagoon, mostly because it was a familiar destination he didn't have to think about. He didn't start running until he saw the boat, and the man in it. The one who had gotten away from him the night before.

The man was tugging at the ripcord of an outboard motor in no sweet mood, and being confronted by the personification of his failure wasn't much of an incentive for improvement. But a nasty smile spread across his face, and he drew his knife. At least he'd have this much satisfaction.

The two men, mirror images, stood at the water's edge and considered one other.

"Do you have anything to say before I kill you?" asked Agent 222.

Gilligan shrugged. "Yeah. Your boat just sailed."

Agent 222 looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, his boat was drifting away from shore, and with a muffled curse, he leapt in the water and swam after it. _I am a dead man,_ he thought gloomily, hoisting himself onboard. _I failed my mission, and the Commandant will make sure I never leave Siberia. When I go back to Russia, I'm dead._

He cut the motor as a thought struck him. **_If_** _I go back to Russia, I'm dead._ It wasn't much of a choice, really. Go back to Russia, which meant either a one-way trip to a prison camp or a formal introduction to a firing squad. Or stay here on this island, which meant a lifetime of pretending to be the world's prize idiot and being ordered around by the runners-up in that unenviable contest. _Ah, bozhe moi,* what a mess. Well, at least this island is warm._

He turned the boat around, steered it back to shore, where Gilligan was still standing, watching him. "Well, then," he said smoothly. "You wanted to show your comrades that there are two of us, da*? Let us show them." He smiled, and inclined his head and extended a graceful arm in a 'lead on, MacDuff' sort of gesture.

Gilligan rubbed the still-sore back of his head warily, but he nodded, and turned to lead the way. "See, nobody's going to believe me when I tell them you're here until they can see for themselves that there are two of us. So if you just—" _Thunk_.

"Durak,*" 222 muttered, looking at the man now measuring his length on the sand with some disdain. Dropping his rock, he knelt beside Gilligan's still form, turned him over, unfolded the knife blade from his laser beam / transmitter/ tape recorder/ et cetera, and held it to his face. It misted over; he was still breathing. Was that a good thing?

222 debated on whether or not to kill the man, but decided against it. A disgraced spy was one thing, and one that would be made to disappear in short order, at that. A spy who had been caught and executed by the Americanskis was a Martyred Hero; his story would be bruited about and his death avenged. That was the last thing he wanted to see happen. He wanted his superiors to forget about him, forget that this island existed; to put the supposed 222 up against the wall and move on to more pressing matters before they examined anything too closely. As soon as he awoke, of course, the poor fool would begin insisting that he was not 222, or, for that matter, even Russian at all, but with any luck that would be either blamed on the blow to the head or explained away as the desperate ploy of a doomed failure.

He refolded the knife, and shoved it into Gilligan's pocket; from now on the Commandant could eavesdrop to his heart's content, and it would be no concern of his. Taking hold of his double's ankles, he dragged the sailor to the boat and dumped him in. He restarted the motor, engaged the autopilot, and shoved the boat into the current.

Slowly, the boat left the lagoon. "Das vedanye,* comrade," he said. "Enjoy the snow."

 _Well, that's that_ , he thought. _Goodbye, 222. Goodbye, Russia. Now… time to be Gilligan._ He relaxed, let his face settle into an expression of sunny innocence, and ambled back along the path to camp.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

* Izvenitye – I'm sorry

* Bozhe moi – Oh, dear

* Da – Yes

* Durak – Fool

* Das vedanye – Goodbye

All translations and transliterations are courtesy of Google, and thus are probably wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

Every instinct he had was telling him to sneak up to the camp, to listen to his new comrades, get the lay of the land before he appeared in their midst. Every ounce of training he had ever received insisted that he should act with caution, that he could not count on fortune to save him from his own foolishness. Every plan he had formulated for this mission involved a great deal of careful surveillance before his eventual infiltration.

But he must have inherited Gilligan's luck when he'd been given his face, because he was captured before he could even decide what to do first.

"Ah, there you are, my boy," drawled the capitalist. "Just in time! Lovey and I are heading out for a round of golf. And where would we be without our favorite caddy?"

A strap descended over his shoulder, and 222 staggered under the sudden weight of a golf bag. "But Mr. Howell—"

"No buts, dear boy, it's so vulgar," Mrs. Howell said. "Come along, now."

He went along. What else was there to do? He trailed along behind the capitalist pigs and handed them their clubs, more or less at random, not merely because he had scarcely more than a passing familiarity with golf, and therefore was not entirely certain of the difference between a wedge and a putter in the first place, but, as well, these ridiculous contraptions were nothing more than seashells tied to bamboo canes. After the third time he had handed the financier a clamshell on a stick when he wanted an oyster, or perhaps the other way around, the man lost his temper.

"Heavens to Muirfield, my boy, get the wax out of your ears! I said a nine-iron; this is a three-wood!"

222 looked at them. _No, this one is a clam, and that one is a conch, you insufferable parasite._ "Gee, I'm really sorry, Mr. Howell. Maybe I should write their names on the handles so I don't forget again."

"I wasn't aware he knew how to write," Mr. Howell stage-whispered to his wife, and rolled his eyes. "No, my boy, let's just get on with the game. Give me my driver. No, not that one—no, the other… not _that_ other, the _other_ other… yes, that one! Finally. Fore!"

It was a very long round of golf, and it would be hard to say which of them was the more relieved when it was over. 222 followed them back to their campsite, the golf bag slung over his shoulder getting heavier by the minute, and threw it into their hut as the Howells settled themselves into deck chairs, apparently exhausted from the effort of recreation. He turned to go.

"Gilligan, aren't you forgetting something?" Mr. Howell said.

 _I'm beginning to forget what sounded so bad about Siberia._ "Um, what is it, Mr. Howell?"

"Our _drinks_ , good fellow. We're absolutely parched after being out in the tropical sun all this time! Bring us our usual post-golf drinks, if you would be so kind."

Their usual drinks? 222 went back into the hut, scanned the sideboard in desperation, and eventually settled on pineapple juice with a splash of gin, mostly because, when the capitalists kicked up the inevitable fuss about these being the wrong drinks, that seemed like the sort of thing he would most enjoy drinking himself. Because of course there was no vodka. Americans had no taste.

Re-emerging with two bamboo tumblers, he handed one to each of them. To his utter amazement, neither one objected to his choice; a surprised blink or two when they tasted it, but no complaints. Not wanting to push his luck, he said quickly, "Well, I hope you enjoyed your golf game, Mr. and Mrs. Howell, but I really do have to go do some stuff," he said brightly, edging towards the jungle.

And he got twenty whole yards away from the clearing before he felt a hand the size of a porterhouse steak seize him by the shoulder. "Hey, there, little buddy… got a minute?"

222 thought fast. The captain was going to be the hardest one to fool, and they hadn't gotten off to the best of starts; the large man had already picked him up by the scruff of the neck and literally thrown him out the door once, and he wasn't really in the mood for a repeat performance. He pitched up his voice a step or two and tried to sound casual. "Sure thing, Skipper. What is it?"

"Well, to be honest, I've been thinking a lot about what you said this morning," the Skipper began.

 _Chyort voz'mi! He knows. Gilligan must have told him everything; now he knows that their mission here is compromised and—_

"And you're right. I really haven't been treating you all that well, have I? I'm sorry," said the Skipper. "I _should_ listen to you more. I should believe you, even when what you're saying sounds farfetched… like the gorilla, or all the other stuff. It's not fair of me to always assume that you're talking through your hat, and I'll try to do better from here on out."

222 blinked. That was… not what he had expected. _Perhaps the raspizdyai finally stood up for himself. Good for him… and very good for me!_ "Boy, I'm really glad to hear you say that," he said warmly. "Thanks, Skipper. That really means a lot." He plastered a big, innocent smile across his face, and for the first time let himself hope that this half-baked scheme might actually work.

At least he didn't have to kill the capitalist peshka quite yet. He didn't really like killing people unless it was absolutely necessary.

OoOoOoO

The walls were haze gray, and the whole room felt… mobile. It vibrated slightly, in the way islands (as a general rule) did not, but which was nonetheless as familiar as his own heartbeat. He groaned a bit as consciousness began peeling through the layers of sleep clouding his brain, mostly because consciousness, for reasons he couldn't yet quite ascertain, involved a pounding headache, a vague sense of nausea, and a spot on the back of his head that hurt so badly he wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep in the hopes that a second try at waking up would be less horrible.

But whoever was shaking his shoulder didn't want to hear it. "I'm up, I'm up," he mumbled. "Sorry, Sarge; I'm up…"

But the sergeant still wasn't happy, because he let fly with a long stream of syllables, none of which Gilligan could understand. Not, in and of itself, terribly unusual, but as a general rule, most of the syllables that made up a large portion of Sarge's vocabulary were at least somewhat familiar. Gilligan had seen most of them written on bathroom walls, and, besides, Sarge always interspersed them with a lot of regular words like 'now,' or 'and,' or 'you,' so even if you didn't know _exactly_ what the man was suggesting, and chances were that you didn't really want to, you could get the gist of it with relatively little trouble.

Not this time, though. He couldn't understand a single word. The man was talking so fast, the syllables blending into one another, that Gilligan wasn't even sure where each word began or ended. Panic began sifting through the groggy haze in his mind, shouldering aside the pain. What was going on here? Why did everything sound like gibberish? Had he gone crazy for real?

He blinked. And why was he on a ship? And he was, no question about that; all it took was one glance at the stark gray walls, one moment of feeling the engines thrumming through the deck beneath his feet, to tell him that much. And the man still shaking him couldn't possibly be Sarge, because Sarge was career Navy, while he, Gilligan, had been out of the service for at least a couple of years now. But this was a ship. This was a Navy ship; it couldn't be anything else. Had they been rescued? If so, when? How? Had he slept through the whole thing? "How did I get here?" he asked.

The man shaking his shoulder laughed. "You are still playing part of Gilligan, eh? Very good, tovarisch, but mission is over! No need to keep using funny voice."

Adrenaline cleared the last of the daze from his mind. He swallowed, finally taking in his surroundings. This was a ship, a military ship, all right, but between the man's uniform and his accent, there wasn't much doubt about _whose_ military it was.

 _Oh, my God. I've been captured. I'm a POW. Wait—can you even be a POW when there isn't a W going on?_ He was fairly sure that the answer to that was 'yes.' He put his hand to his throat, to the chain looped around his neck, but there were no dog tags there; just the steel four-leafed clover he wore for luck. He hoped it was still working.

"But what happened? We find you in boat, out cold, with blood in hair. Hit from behind! Did Americanskis attack you?"

"They wouldn't do that!" he said reflexively, stung.

"True. Would never have courage to attack Soviet agent," the man agreed, clapping Gilligan on the shoulder. "Commandant wishes to see you, to discuss mission. Where is tape recorder? I must make transcriptions of information you have collected."

"Uh, the pocket knife?"

Now the other man looked concerned. "Comrade, you must have hit head harder than I thought. Yes, of course, the pocket knife."

He checked his pockets, and somehow was not surprised to find the knife. _They think I'm him. The other me. But the other me was the one with the knife, because I never had it, but now I do have it. Am I the me they think I am, or the me I thought I was?_ Wordlessly, he handed over the knife.

"Spasibo," said the man. "You rest. I will tell the Commandant he must wait to debrief you until you have recovered."

"Er… okay. Spazzy bowl," Gilligan said, trying to mimic the other man's pronunciation.

Apparently without success, because the Soviet agent just shook his head, visibly concerned, and left. The click of the lock engaging was very loud in the suddenly silent room. Obviously, whether he was Gilligan-the-first-mate or Gilligan-the-spy wasn't going to make a whole lot of difference in the long run. Either way, he was Gilligan-the-prisoner.

All right. He tried to reason it out the way the Professor would, the way the Skipper would. He was aboard a Soviet naval vessel. That was a fact. The men on that vessel seemed to think that he was his double. He was pretty sure that they were wrong, because he remembered being Gilligan for his whole life, and he _didn't_ remember anything about being a Soviet spy. He didn't even remember how to speak Russian. On the other hand, the pocket knife death ray _had_ been in his pocket, and it had only ever been in the other Gilligan's pocket, which might mean that—

He started. Wait a minute… how _could_ it have been in his pocket? The Professor had found it on the beach! Were there two spies? Was all this just a hallucination? Maybe the Professor was right, and there never had been another Gilligan, just an ego distastement, after getting clocked over the head with something. He put a gentle, tentative finger to the back of his head and winced at the pain. Yes, getting clobbered had definitely happened somewhere along the line. So maybe this was all just a crazy dream. Except, if it was just a dream, how had he gotten on the ship?

Enough. There were, somehow, two Gilligans. The Soviet had thought he was the second one, the spy. Whether he was or not—and he was almost positive that he wasn't—might it be a good thing to pretend that he was? He thought about it for a moment, then discarded the notion. He didn't know for sure what the Soviets might do with him, except that it probably wasn't going to be very nice. Even so, all he had to tell them was his name, rank and serial number, and he knew all of those answers. If he tried to pretend he was a Soviet spy, he wouldn't know any of the answers, and they might decide that he was an _American_ spy. And he was pretty sure that, whatever they did with captured sailors, what they would do to captured spies was a whole lot less nice.

And maybe, just maybe, if they told Washington that they had him, the Navy would figure out that, if one member of the missing Minnow's complement was alive, the others might be, too, and they would be rescued, he thought, grasping for any shred of optimism he could manage.

Or maybe Siberia wouldn't be as bad as everyone said...

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

* Chyort voz'mi—damn it

* Raspizdyai—idiot

* Peshka—worthless person. Literally 'chess pawn'

* Tovarisch—comrade

* Spasibo—thank you

* Spazzy Bowl—extremely mangled version of above

All translations and transliterations still courtesy of Google, and thus ought to be taken with the requisite grain of salt.


	3. Chapter 3

The Soviet opened the door. Somewhat worryingly, the young man in the red shirt was propped against the wall, his cap over his face, either dead or asleep. _Careless_ , he thought. _I ought to have made certain he wasn't carrying poison_.

A gentle snore from beneath the hat settled that question; he was still breathing. A cool customer, this one, he thought, with grudging approval. Leaning over, for the second time, he shook the man by the shoulder, not particularly gently. "Wake up. Wake up!"

Gilligan opened his eyes, yawned. Well, he was still on a Soviet ship. Too bad. At least his head hurt less this time. Skipper was right; he had pretty much the thickest skull in the seventh fleet, and it came in real handy at times like this. "Um, good morning… wait, is it morning yet? Is today still yesterday, or is it tomorrow already? My watch stopped."

The Soviet blinked. "Is four o'clock in afternoon," he said, latching onto the last sentence as the only one that made sense. It wasn't his fault. He wasn't a native English speaker, for one thing, and Gilliganese was a language all its own, for another. "You slept most of day."

"Huh. My grandfather always used to say that you should never turn down a chance to eat, sleep, or visit the heads. 'Cause you never knew when you'd get another chance, he'd say." He stretched, straightened out his clothes, and donned his cap. "He also said there was one other thing you should never miss a chance to do, but he couldn't tell me till I was older. Then grandma smacked him, so I never found out what it was." He grinned. _Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm…_ "Anyway, I'm awake now. What did you want?"

The man gave him an odd look, and reeled off something complicated in what was presumably Russian. Gilligan's face stayed blank.

"Sorry, mister—I don't understand Russian. Skipper says I barely understand English," he said.

The man sighed. "Comrade, you are playing game with me, yes? Is not funny. Commandant is losing patience, you understand me?"

"I'm not playing any games," Gilligan said. "I just don't speak Russian, that's all. I know a few words in Latin, from church; does that count? Ave Maria, gratia—"

"Bud spokoyen!"

"Well, you don't have to yell," Gilligan muttered. He didn't speak Russian, but he could recognize a 'shut up' when he heard one, no matter what language it was in.

The Soviet, with a grimace, rubbed what was probably a throbbing temple; another thing that didn't need much of a translation. The agent was losing his patience; that was going to be something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Gilligan thought, people made mistakes when they were annoyed, and often let slip a lot more than they had ever intended. On the other hand, he was rather attached to his teeth, and wanted to make sure they all stayed attached to him.

"We start over," the Soviet said finally. "You want to talk American? We talk American. Mission was complete failure. You have explanation?"

"I have explanation," Gilligan said. "I'm not who you think I am. You're probably talking about my twin—and I wish you'd go get him! He did nothing but get me in trouble."

"Agent 222, this is no longer amusing. Commandant is very angry."

"Good! I'm angry, too! What's the big idea?" Gilligan got up. He was still shorter than the other man— _so what else was new?_ — but not by much. "I'm not Agent Whoever-That-Is. I'm _me_ , Seaman Gilligan, US Navy, honorably discharged. Serial number eight-sixty, forty-two, eighteen. And you can tell your Commandant that you've got the wrong guy."

"I should tell the Commandant there has been mistake? You are sure this what you want, Agent 222?"

"I'm not Agent Anybody! And you can tell your Commandant to go suck an egg for all I care."

"I think this will not be necessary," said the man. "I am Commandant, and I suspect we have much to discuss." He rapped on the door; two burly men in uniform came in, and the Commandant's smile widened as he watched his new friend go pale, and backpedal a step or two, until he fetched up against the wall. "Yes," he repeated. "We have many things to learn from one another, no?"

OoOoOoO

There had been firewood to fetch. There had been trees to climb, gathering fruits of various types. The huts, for reasons that genuinely passed his understanding, needed to be swept. Presumably the sand he swept out the door was in some way distinguishable from the sand that still made up the floor of the huts, but he couldn't see how. There had been fish traps to harvest, and the lobsters had been inordinately vicious in what he could only assume was some sort of preemptive revenge. The Howells had wanted another round of drinks. Then it was off to the well with a yoke over his shoulders. And after that, just about the time his clothing had begun to dry out enough to be comfortable again, he found himself _back_ in the accursed lagoon shouting measurements from a series of painted bamboo sticks planted at what he could only assume were strategic locations while the Professor—who, of course, was safe on dry land—wrote the numbers into a notebook.

 _Perhaps they are studying some new sort of underwater mines,_ 222 thought desperately. This was the only thing that had happened yet that was even slightly mysterious, as opposed to tedious, dull, or both, and he was beginning to have an uncomfortable suspicion that these people were exactly what they seemed to be—victims of circumstance, shipwrecked and forgotten. _Cannot be. Commandant would not have sent me here if there was nothing to find. It must be a trick of some sort._

"Hey, Professor! Are you almost finished?" The Skipper emerged from the jungle.

"Nearly," the Professor said. "Gilligan is just helping me check the last of the depth markers. Was there something you wanted him for?"

The Skipper looked out into the lagoon, to the slight figure examining a painted bamboo cane, squinting a bit in the bright sunlight. "Him? No, I'm pretty sure that I don't want _him_ for anything. Professor, have you noticed anything strange about him today?"

"Nothing alarming," the Professor said. "But our paths haven't really crossed since last night. I just happened to run into him when I came down here, and asked him to assist me with some data collection. I will say he's been a bit quieter than usual, but he is, after all, recovering from a fairly stressful experience."

"Quiet from Gilligan _is_ alarming," the Skipper said grimly. "But that's not all. For one thing, I saw him carrying a tray with the Howells' drinks."

"So? The Howells routinely request cocktails before dinner."

"So he carried that tray from their hut to their country club, and _didn't spill a drop_."

The Professor looked concerned. "I'll admit that is unusual…"

"That's not unusual; that's a _miracle_. And I made some comment about how I thought my slacks had shrunk in the wash. He just nodded and said that the girls needed to be more careful!" The Skipper folded his arms. "His shoelaces have stayed tied all day, he hasn't stepped on my foot even once, and I'm almost positive I saw him watching Ginger and Mary Ann when they were doing their exercises. They were doing _jumping jacks_ , Professor! Last time they did those, he walked straight into a tree and then ran for the lagoon, remember?"

The Professor remembered, all right. He was only human, and the jumping jacks had been... exceptional. "Hmmm. Taken singly, none of those facts would seem especially worrisome, but…"

"But all together, they add up to trouble," the Skipper finished.

222 splashed back to shore. "Hiya, Skipper," he said cheerfully. "Me and the Professor were just working on an experiment. That was the last of the measuring sticks, Professor; did we discover anything good? Will it be any help for new inventions or anything?"

The Skipper and the Professor traded glances. "We discovered that the tides are completely normal for this time of year," the Professor said.

222 looked a bit crestfallen. "Just the tides? That's all we were checking?"

"Well, we certainly don't want to be caught unawares if it seems likely that the island could be flooded… again," the Professor said carefully. Any mention of the great sunken island fiasco usually brought a blush or a grimace to the sailor's face; this time he just looked thoughtful.

"True; it would be very bad for us if that were to happen," he replied. "But I'm sure we would all pull together to overcome our difficulties, just as we did last time."

The Skipper's jaw set. "Sure thing, little buddy. Just like last time," he said. "Hey, what time is it? My watch stopped."

222 pushed up his sleeve an inch or so, consulted his watch. His wrist, of course, was smooth and unmarked, with no trace of the rope burns the Skipper had tended the night before. With a snarl that would have done a lion proud, the Skipper grabbed him. "I knew it! Professor! Get some vines!"

222 struggled with the larger man with all the power of desperation, but it was too late; the Skipper had him in a sleeper hold, and… everything was… going dark and…

OoOoOoO

"Eight-sixty, forty-two, eighteen," Gilligan droned for what felt like the millionth time.

"What is the nature of your mission on island?" asked the Commandant, for the million-and-first time.

"Eight-sixty, forty-two, eighteen." He glared at the Commandant. "I can do this all day, you know."

"I am patient man, American," the Commandant said softly. "Very patient; I can wait. You can tell truth now, or you can tell truth later, only with ten broken fingers, but sooner or later you will tell me what I want to know."

"What is there to tell? There's no secret, no mystery. I'm a charter-boat sailor. Me and my captain got caught in a typhoon with a boatload of tourists, and we all got shipwrecked. End of story."

The Commandant considered that for a moment. Slowly, deliberately, he nodded. Then, quick as a striking snake, he backhanded Gilligan hard enough that his eyes took a moment to refocus. "We will start again, yes? What is your mission?"

Licking a newly split lip, genuinely stunned, he tasted blood. It was a far cry from the Skipper's harmless little love-taps, that was for sure. He swallowed it down, the blood and the shock alike, then shrugged. "Okay. Fine. You got me. See, we're all part of an experiment to see how people manage in close quarters for a long time. So when our astronauts build their moon base next year, we'll have some idea how they'll act."

The Commandant's eyes widened. "…Moon base? So soon?"

"Nope, not really. The real truth is that we've all been infected with an awful new disease, and it's really catching. They put us out there alone so we couldn't start an epidemic. Probably you've all got it already, just from having me onboard. Ah—ah—achoo!" Even that fakest of fake sneezes made the Commandant flinch. "Just kidding! How about this? We're out here because we're trying to figure out how to communicate with this space alien that crash-landed in New Mexico, a couple of years ago. No, no; I got a better one. _We're_ the space aliens, and we've been watching you guys for a hundred years. No, wait—the truth is we're the staging area for these new invisible submarines the Navy's building. I can prove that one's true," he said, grinning with bloodstained teeth. "You didn't see any submarines, right? Well, there you go!"

"Do you think I am _stupid_ , American?"

"Is that a trick question? Go on—hit me again, if it makes you feel any better; it won't change anything. What could you possibly want from us? Are you still afraid we're going to tell someone that Ivan and Igor landed on the wrong side of the planet?"

"Nu ti dajosh, American. Very good, I am impressed, but it will not save you. _You_ will never have the chance to tell anyone anything," the Commandant promised, calming himself down.

"Yeah, I kind of figured that part out for myself. The truth is that there's nothing to tell. You guys want the island? Fine by us! Give us a boat and a two hour head start, and you can _have_ it!"

OoOoOoO

222 opened his eyes, and immediately wished he hadn't. His hands were tied, and his throat hurt, and his mouth tasted like the inside of an old boot. He looked up; three men were watching him, and there was nothing friendly in any of their expressions. _Chyort_ , he thought fatalistically. _Well, I tried._

"Where is he?" asked the Skipper. "If you've hurt him, there'll be hell to pay, you can bet on that! _Where is he?_ "

222 twitched an insouciant shoulder. "By now? Halfway to Moscow, I suppose. Submarine was waiting offshore."

The Skipper's hands clenched into fists. "You'd better have some way of calling it back," he growled.

"I don't," he said simply. "It is over for you, Americans; your secret mission here is doomed. He will tell my Commandant everything he knows." He didn't actually know if that was true, but he hoped it was. Perhaps the American had already talked; perhaps the Commandant already knew that he, Agent 222, had not failed _entirely_. Perhaps he would die forgiven, his name clean. He looked at the grim men looming over him, and knew that was the best he could hope for. Perhaps it always had been.

OoOoOoO

* Bud Spokoyen—Be quiet

* Nu ti dajosh – You've got nerve. Depending on tone and context, this can be either complimentary or not. In this case, I rather think it was.

* Chyort—Damn

Translations still via Google. Still not especially trustworthy.

Author's note: In yet another shameless attempt to substitute details cadged from Wikipedia and Google for actual knowledge, I _think_ I got the serial number right, at least as regards number of digits and the range of numbers that would have been used for a Navy enlisted man in the sixties. The numbers themselves- 860 42 18- are something of a joke: 18 is Jewish numerology for 'life.' 42, according to Douglas Adams, is the ultimate answer to life. And 86 is diner slang for 'get him out of here.' So the ultimate meaning of life, for our favorite stranded sailor, is to get back home.


	4. Chapter 4

Some hours later, 222—slightly surprised that he was still alive— sat in a sturdy bamboo cage, guarded by the Skipper, who had a machete at his belt, a spear in his hand, and murder in his eyes. A scarlet i'iwi flew into the cage and landed on 222's head. For a moment she seemed friendly, and preened a strand of his hair, tame as could be. Then, abruptly, she let out an indignant squawk, bit his ear—hard—and flew away again, to a tree branch safely out of reach, where she glared at him. The Skipper snorted, in what might have been called a laugh if it had even the faintest shadow of humor in it, and shot 222 a matching glare.

"Even the birds know you're not him," he said bitterly. "Tell me, how long did you think you were going to be able to fool us? How dumb did you think we were?"

"I do not know," 222 admitted. "Probably not very long. But I could not go back home. Whatever fate I meet at your hands, it would have been worse for me there."

"So you set up Gilligan to take the fall for you?" If the Skipper's eyes blazed any hotter, he would have set fire to his hair. "You scumsucking, rotten, low-down snake! What did he ever do to you?"

"Nothing at all," said 222. "But I had no options, captain, and I am only human. A man will always attempt to save his own life, at any cost."

"Well, you haven't saved it, not by a long shot." The Skipper got up, paced. "And don't be too sure that you'll get off any easier here than you would have back there. I was at Guadalcanal; I've seen any number of men die in any number of really ugly ways, you understand me?"

"Da," he said, and turned his face away. "I understand."

OoOoOoO

Ginger, carrying a tray, approached the cage. "I've brought his dinner," she said quietly. "Skipper, you've been here for hours. I'll take over guard duty while you go rest, and eat."

"It's no job for a woman," the Skipper said brusquely. "Thanks anyway, Ginger, but I'll stay."

"All right, Skipper, but for how long?" She put her hands on her hips. "Are you going to stand here all night? What about tomorrow? He's locked up, Skipper; it's perfectly safe. Just rest for a while. I promise he'll still be here when you get back."

"…Fine," the Skipper said, finally. He handed her the spear. "Hold this for a minute. You! Red! Stand on the far side of the cell, and no tricks!"

222 obeyed, and the Skipper unlocked the door, just wide enough to slip the dinner tray inside, then refastened it. He did not give Ginger the key. "All right. You just hang in there, Ginger; if he gives you any trouble, blow the conch, and I'll be here before you know it."

She stood on tiptoe, kissed his cheek. "I'll be just fine. Shoo."

The big man did, shooting one last evil glare to the cage and its occupant, then vanished into the jungle. There was silence.

"Your dinner's getting cold," Ginger said after a while.

222 glanced at the tray. "Is poisoned, no?"

"It's not poisoned," Ginger said evenly. "It's coconut-pineapple casserole; exactly what the rest of us are having for dinner."

"Probably better for you that it is not. I think that your Captain wishes to kill me himself."

She gave him a long, slow look. "He won't. But could you blame him if he did want to?"

"I do not blame him for wanting to. And I will not blame him when he does," 222 said.

"He won't. We're not murderers," Ginger said. _Unlike you_ , she did not say. "Go on. Eat."

Silently, he held up his hands. They were securely tied.

"…Oh." Ginger thought about it. The cage was extremely sturdy. "All right. Come over here."

 _Unbelievable_ , 222 thought, sticking his hands through the bars. Ginger used the spear point to cut the vine. _Who_ _ **are**_ _these people?_

"Well, there you are," Ginger said, her voice cold. "Eat up."

He flexed his hands—ironically, now that it was too late, he had the rope burns that had given him away after all—and sat down to eat. "Very good," he said politely. "I thank you."

"Well, don't think this means I like you," she said.

"No, you have made this quite clear," he said. He looked at the trail the Skipper had taken. "You have _all_ made this quite clear."

Ginger was quiet for a while. Then, just as he had decided she was finished speaking, she found her voice. "Gilligan was his best friend, you know," she said. If her voice had been cold before, it dripped icicles now. "We all cared about him."

He exhaled sharply. "Friends? If that is sample of American friendship, I am most curious to see what enmity will be like." He sneered. "Insults, shouting, working like mule for less than no thanks… at least in Siberia I would not have to smile and pretend I like it!"

"I wish you _were_ in Siberia! I wish you had never come here!"

 _"As do I!"_ He leapt to his feet; Ginger recoiled. "You think this is how I wanted my career to end? Hunting for secrets that do not exist? Hiding in jungle because I am too big a coward to face consequences of failure? I could not impersonate your Gilligan; very well, I am bad spy. But realizing that I am bad _person_? That I am weak, that I am stupid, that I am disgraceful? This is not how I wanted any of this to end!" He kicked the tray roughly aside, and thrust his hands back through the bars. "Toropit'sya. If I am free when captain returns, he will be angry with you."

OoOoOoO

The days passed.

OoOoOoO

A rough hand shook him awake yet again, and he flinched. Without opening his eyes, he mumbled, "Eight-sixty, forty-two, eightee—"

"Enough!"

Gilligan opened his eyes; that wasn't the Commandant. It was one of the somewhat interchangeable bruisers who guarded the doors, ran errands, took notes during interrogations, and the like. This was the light-haired one. "Oh. Hi," he said.

"Is food, American," said the guard, who was not much of a conversationalist. He handed over a familiar mess tray, with a very familiar aroma.

"Hey—you guys eat this stuff too?" It was that old military favorite, chipped beef on toast; a true gourmand's delight, if you redefined all of those words to mean their precise opposite. "We used to call this 'SOS,' which stood for 'Slop on a Shingle.' You guys have any nicknames for it? How do you say 'slop' in Russian?"

"Is food," he repeated, stone-faced. He rapped on the door, and his dark-haired counterpart let him out.

"Good talking with you," he muttered, and poked at the food. They never turned the lights out, and so he didn't know if it was day or night, or how many days or nights it had been since he'd woken up here. He didn't know where they were going, or how long it would take to get there, or what was going to happen to him once they did arrive. And there was precisely nothing he could do about any of that. So he just followed his grandfather's adage; he ate whenever they fed him, and slept whenever he could calm himself down sufficiently to do so, and whenever the questioning started, he spun ridiculous lies and waited for the Commandant to lose patience.

The lights, the interrogations, the isolation—they were designed to drive him crazy, he knew. He'd seen it in a dozen spy films. He knew what they were trying to do. The problem was, it was working.

He thought of his friends, and of the spy with his face, who was probably—right this very minute—sitting boldly in his spot at the table planning who-knew-what dastardly schemes. They'd all be going about their business, just like normal, and one by one, the spy would... No. No—that couldn't be. They would notice that something was wrong. They would know it wasn't him.

 _They didn't notice last time…_

He told that little voice to shut up. They had _so_ noticed. They'd thought he had flipped his lid, but they'd noticed that something wasn't right. They would notice it again.

 _They might just think that they'd traded up_ …

No! He bit down hard on his lip, reopening the cut, and forced himself to take a couple of deep, calming breaths. "Please, Skipper," he whispered. "Take a real good look. He's not me. He's not. Please have noticed…"

OoOoOoO

"Skipper, I need to speak with you," said the Professor.

The Skipper, looking grimmer than ever, grunted something that might have been 'later' or 'not now' or possibly 'drop dead,' but the Professor was insistent. "Please, Skipper. This is important."

"All right, Professor," he said. "What's the problem?"

"It's… it's about our hostage. Agent 222."

"Has he escaped? Did he hurt anyone?"

"No! No, Skipper. Nothing like that. But I think we need to all sit down and discuss what we're going to do from this point. We can't go on as we have been."

"What is there to discuss? I've got a coil of rope all ready to go," the Skipper said.

"Skipper—we can't do that," the Professor said gently. "For several reasons. First and foremost, if his employers do return, he'll be the only bargaining chip we have. And we couldn't, anyway. We aren't killers."

The Skipper's eyes were cold. "Maybe _you_ couldn't. I was in combat before I could drink legally."

"Be that as it may, we need him alive, Skipper. He's another pair of hands, and one we desperately need. There's simply too much that needs to be done to leave one able-bodied man sitting idly in prison, and leaving another to guard him," the Professor said, and mentally braced himself for whatever was going to happen next.

"If you're suggesting what I _think_ you're suggesting, Professor, then you must've gone island-happy!" The Skipper slammed a hand on the table. "You can't be serious!"

"I assure you, I am deadly serious, Skipper," he said. "The huts are in disrepair. Firewood is low, our supplies of stored food are nearly gone, and our signal fire hasn't been lit in days. Skipper, face facts; neither the girls nor the Howells have the physical strength to accomplish the sort of tasks Gilligan used to handle. The two of us cannot hope to perform his duties as well as our own, especially if we have to divide our time between the necessities of life and guarding a man who hasn't made a hostile move since being captured!"

"I don't care how harmless he seems from behind bars; that man's a menace, and I'm not about to open the door and ask him to pretty please go fetch a pail of water! He's already done for my little buddy—who do you want to see go next?" He put his hand to the hilt of his machete; it hadn't left his side in days. It seemed to calm him a bit; he lowered his voice back to reasonably normal speaking levels. "I want him dead, Professor. I can't stand to so much as look at him. Every time I do, for a split second I think he's Gilligan, and I have to remember all over again that he's not coming back. You can't ask me to live with that monster."

"We were all willing to live with Presidente Rodriguez," the Professor reminded him. The unstable little ex-dictator would have been an appalling roommate, and had in fact done his best to kill them all, but they had bowed to necessity then, and the way he saw it, they had no choice but to do the same now.

"That was different!"

"How so?"

"He… Damn it, Professor, Rodriguez wasn't walking around with Gilligan's face!" The Skipper's hand went to his machete again. "Waiting for his agents? That's bilge. If his team wanted him, they'd've been here already. A bargaining chip no one's willing to bargain for is worthless. I'm not asking you to help; I'll do it myself. But I want him _gone_."

The Professor just looked at him. "It won't bring him back, Skipper," he said quietly.

The Skipper glared at him.

"We need another pair of hands. Our survival is at stake. I understand how you feel, Skipper. I sympathize. But I simply don't see another option."

OoOoOoO

"…I admit it. We're animal trainers. We've got a whole battalion of trained sharks who live in our lagoon. My job is flossing their teeth."

"You are only making things worse for yourself, you know."

"That's what I'm best at. That and teaching the sharks about good dental hygiene. If they behave, they get a lollipop."

"You are still making jokes, American?"

"Who's laughing? Eight-sixty, forty-two, eighteen."

"You do not listen very well. Perhaps if I were to remove one ear you would hear me better from the other one, yes?"

There was a very long pause. Then Gilligan took a deep, ragged breath. "Eight-sixty, forty-two—"

OoOoOoO

Author's note: The slang term 'SOS' for chipped beef is real. The first S does not, as it happens, stand for 'slop,' in either English or Russian, but you already knew that.

* Da—Yes

* Toropit'sya—Hurry


	5. Chapter 5

The Skipper approached 222's cage. He was carrying an axe. For a moment the two men just looked at each other, and it would have been hard to say whose expression was stonier, whose silence more eloquent. Without a word, the Skipper reached for the key strung around his neck and pulled it free, snapping the cord. He unlocked the door and held it open.

222, who, not unreasonably, assumed that his execution was at hand, stepped out of the cell and onto the beach with a solemn dignity that would have done credit to any martyr going to the lions, or, for that matter, any ham actor overplaying a death scene. His hauteur was abruptly quenched when the Skipper shoved the axe at him, handle first.

"Here. We need firewood, at least a quarter of a cord. After that, you'll dig us a new drainage ditch, and once that's done, I'll have a list waiting for you."

"I… I do not understand," 222 said, dazed.

"Let me explain so you do understand, then. We need firewood. That's the brown stuff that comes from trees, see? You're going to go gather some. Using that axe. You hold it by the dull end, and swing the shiny part at the logs. And make it snappy. From here on out, if you don't work, you don't eat."

"You are setting me free. Handing me weapon. Why for?"

"Don't ask me dumb questions when you've got work to do. Move!"

"This is so you may say I was trying to escape and shoot me in back?" He dropped the axe. "No."

The Skipper, hanging on to the few remaining shreds of his temper with all his might, cleared his throat. "Pick. It. Up," he said. "I don't play games, Red. And I'd never shoot you in the back, either; I'd look you straight in the eyes and watch as you drowned in your own blood. Believe you me, this wasn't my idea, I don't like it one little bit, and I don't trust you as far as I could throw you, but I was outvoted. Your sentence has hereby been commuted from death to hard labor. So you just pick up that axe and go chop some firewood. You wanted my little buddy's life? You wanted to be him? You got his chores to do. Move!"

Slowly, disbelievingly, 222 picked up the axe, and edged away from the Skipper, towards the jungle, with its deadfall and its foliage and its freedom. His head was spinning—none of this made any sense, but somehow, miraculously, it seemed that he'd won, at least for now. He would live; perhaps it was the life of a pariah or a serf, but it was more than he'd expected. It was more than he'd dreamed was possible.

He found a likely-looking log, and he swung the axe for the first cut, feeling his stiff muscles beginning to flex and warm to the task, and he felt an undeniable, triumphant smile spreading across his face.

OoOoOoO

"…bottles of beeeeeeeer; if one of those bottles should happen to fall…"

The guard on duty's haunted eyes lit up as he spotted his relief making his way down the corridor. "Comrade! I am very glad to see you," he said. "If I had to stand here much longer listening to this, I think I'd have shot myself."

"Oh, come now, Borya," said the other man; he was the light-haired one, and his name, as it happened, was Alexei. "I'll grant you guard duty isn't the most exciting way to spend your time, but he's one skinny American! How bad could it be?"

Borya gestured wordlessly at the cell; Alexei listened. The voice floated through the door; raspy, defiant, mostly on key. The words were in English.

"Two hundred and seventy four bottles of beer on the wall, two hundred and seventy four bottles of beeeeer; if one of those bottles should happen to fall, two hundred and seventy three bottles of beer on the wall…"

Alexei snorted. "So what? Not much of a singing voice, but—"

"He started at one thousand," Borya said, in the measured tones of a man who had survived horrors.

Alexei's face fell with a resounding thud. He understood. "I thought _we_ were supposed to be driving _him_ to the breaking point," he said.

"Comrade, this man is not human," Borya said. "I don't know what the Americans do to produce operatives like this, and I suspect that I don't want to."

"And the Commandant still will not allow more… direct methods of compulsion," Alexei sighed. "I wish I knew why."

"Oh, I can tell you that much. That one's easy," Borya said. "As the Americans would say, the Commandant blew it. One of his top operatives chose to defect in the middle of what should have been the simplest of missions. The recorder came back smashed and useless, with half the components missing, to boot, which means that the Americans now have our top-secret technology. If 222 did not, in fact, defect, he was captured, which is arguably worse. And the only thing we have to show for any of it is this man, who is so confident in his abilities that he did not even attempt to infiltrate our ranks. He is the Commandant's last chance. If the Commandant cannot learn what he knows without resorting to extreme measures, if he fails to prove that he is neither as incompetent or disloyal as his star Agent 222… well, I should not like to be in his shoes."

Alexei glanced at the door. Two hundred and seventy one bottles of beer to go. "I'm not sure I want to be in our shoes, either." He looked to either side; the corridor was deserted. He lowered his voice anyway. "Or his. To be completely honest, I am beginning to wonder. What if the Commandant is wrong? What if this poor fool truly is what he seems, and is not some sort of super-spy, on some devious mission?"

Borya shrugged. "It doesn't make any difference. If the Commandant believes—or, more precisely, if _Moscow_ believes— that he possesses valuable intelligence, then he does. It is only a matter of getting it out of him. It doesn't have to be true. It only has to be plausible."

OoOoOoO

Sleeping arrangements had proved awkward. For obvious reasons, 222 could not be housed with the girls. The Professor admitted to being uneasy at the prospect of having the spy in close proximity to his chemicals and instruments; the Howells simply made a fuss about their need for privacy, and how a man's hut was his castle, and so forth. 222 had volunteered to sleep on the beach; he had thought it might deter them from thinking that he could just as easily be returned to his cell for the night.

But somehow, here they were, two men standing in a grass hut. One hammock was already swung from the support columns. Slowly, grudgingly, the Skipper walked to the closet and extracted a rolled-up expanse of netting that unfurled into a second one. He held it for a moment, then pressed his lips tightly together and began to knot one end to the bamboo pillar.

"Don't just stand there—give me a hand!" he snapped.

Wordlessly, 222 did; looping the other end of the rope into place and tying it neatly. He was exhausted; after the firewood and the drainage trench and the water and the pedal-powered washing machine and the myriad other things that simply had to be done—and fast!— he felt as though he would fall asleep on his feet if he allowed it. But fair was fair, and he could not deny that the captain had worked just as hard as he had. Nor that the others had been toiling away on their own tasks; none of which had been anything other than mundane. He climbed into the hammock and stretched out. The Skipper looked at him for a moment, and his jaw worked. Then, without warning, he stalked out of the hut, returning a few minutes later with a length of vine.

222 knew what was coming. Still wordlessly, he reached out, and passively clasped one edge of the hammock in either hand, making it easy for the larger man to tie his hands to the net, pinioning him like a butterfly on a board.

The Skipper took a deep breath, than another, and dropped the vine. "Get some sleep," he growled. "Tomorrow's going to be another busy day."

OoOoOoO

The Commandant cut the connection with his superiors back in Moscow, and his hands didn't shake even the tiniest bit. His face was, maybe, a bit paler than usual, and his breath a bit quick, but he hid it well. Not even his old mother would have noticed that anything was wrong.

He left his office, and strode down the corridor; Alexei was currently standing guard. He motioned his underling aside and threw open the cell door.

OoOoOoO

222 walked into the Professor's hut with a basket of his clean laundry, which had been handed to him by an aloof-looking Ginger. He dropped the basket on the bed; there were limits, and being expected to put away another man's underwear was well beyond them.

The hut was full of makeshift scientific equipment. He thought he recognized the rack of small reeds as being intended to be test tubes; there was a bamboo contraption with a glass lens at either end that was probably supposed to be a microscope; there was a crude Geiger counter that looked like a tripod made of bamboo; there were gourds full of evil-smelling chemicals; there was a plaited mesh of grasses he couldn't begin to identify. There was a familiar tangle of circuitry attached to a shiny gold screwdriver.

His heart skipped a beat, then stuttered back to something resembling normal. He had slipped into this hut, the night before his impetuous decision to remain on the island, to steal back his multitool communicator. He still couldn't believe he'd been careless enough to lose it. He'd been lurking around the camp, waiting for everyone to fall asleep, so he could at least retrieve the knife. (Exile or execution had already seemed assured, but if he'd gone back without it, a firing squad would have looked like a pleasant day in the park compared to what his superiors would devise.) He had heard the Professor explaining to the Skipper that Gilligan's mind had shattered under their questioning. He had seen the men returning to their huts; the one to stand vigil for a wounded comrade, the other to research treatments for the wounds they had inflicted.

He had not realized that the Professor had already had time to partially dismantle the knife, or that any of the components had remained here on the island. He glowered at the circuits, not sure what he wanted to happen next.

OoOoOoO

"What are you doing on island?"

"I told you already," Gilligan said wearily. In addition to the ever-present lights, his cell now boasted an intercom, which could be counted on to blast reveille no more than fifteen minutes after he fell asleep, whenever that might happen to be. It had not been a welcome addition.

"So tell me again," the Commandant purred.

"Go chase yourself." As witty retorts went, that one ranked only slightly higher than a Bronx cheer, but it was going to have to do.

"What is nature of your work?"

"Depends. I just do whatever needs taking care of," he said.

"Luchshe," said the Commandant. It wasn't much, but it was more than he'd learned so far. "Who are you?"

"Who, me? I don't know. I don't know anything. I thought I knew for sure, but now I'm not sure what I thought I knew. Who do you want me to be?" Gilligan wasn't looking directly at him anymore. He was staring at something just beyond the Commandant's right ear; his sea-blue eyes were glassy and distant. "I don't know anymore. I don't _care_ anymore. Just pick."

The Commandant smiled. "Now we are getting somewhere, American. You will tell me the truth."

"Nope. You don't want that. You want me to tell you the truth you already think you know. You won't believe anything that isn't like how you think the truth ought to be, so there's no point trying to tell you that the truth you want is a lie, and I don't know what lie you want to be the truth. So I'm done talking."

And he was. An hour or so later, the Commandant, furious and frightened, stormed out of the room. He left with a migraine but without any further information. Gilligan didn't bother to move; it just seemed like too much trouble and he was too tired. So he just lay where he'd been dropped, and flung an arm over his eyes to block out as much of the light as he could, and went… away.

There was an ocean, an endless expanse of blue-green, with the waves tipped in white, and a beach, with palm trees ringing the edge like sentries, like the fluted columns on the façade of the town hall back home. Between the trees were bushes full of tropical flowers, nodding their bright heads, and there were birds singing overhead.

Hmmm. Not quite right. He added in a few more details; lobster traps in the ocean, and a path leading back to camp, and the delicate aroma of a fresh-baked coconut pie on the breeze. And Skipper, striding along that path towards the beach, and probably calling for him at the top of his lungs. Like a foghorn wearing a polo shirt.

He relaxed a bit, his breath coming more easily. He watched that beach in his mind's eye, watched as the Howells strolled by—him with a swagger stick in hand, her with a parasol to block out the tropical sun— and as the girls picked fresh flowers for their hut— and as the Professor walked past with his nose firmly in one of his enormous, and enormously boring, books.

And then, aghast, he watched as his double made his surreptitious way along the path, his knife gleaming gold in the sun and a cruel smile on his face. A little voice broke into his imaginings, mocking him, whispering logical poison in his ear, in his exhausted mind.

 _They won't have noticed the switch._

They will **too** notice. They probably already **had** noticed.

 _They noticed, but they don't care._

They're my **friends**. They have to care. And even if they weren't, Skipper wouldn't leave a man behind.

 _He's probably less of a screw-up than you are. They're probably relieved that he's taken your place._

He's a spy! They won't want him running around loose!

 _Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he is the real Gilligan after all. Or was there ever a real Gilligan to begin with? Are you so sure you're not the spy?_

I… I couldn't be. Could I?

 _You tell me…_

" ** _SHUT UP!_** " he shouted, sitting bolt upright. He edged himself back to the wall, and wrapped his arms defensively around his knees. "Just shut up! You're wrong!"

Outside the door, Borya allowed himself a small, triumphant smile. If the American was beginning to lose arguments with thin air, progress was definitively being made. The Commandant would be pleased to hear it.

OoOoOoO

222 was still staring at the golden screwdriver when the Professor came into the hut. "What are you doing in here? Get away from my workbench," he ordered.

"You have components from knife," 222 said. "How much did you remove?"

"Ah, yes. The knife," said the Professor frostily. "I assume you're the one who stole it?"

"Can a man steal what is already his own?"

The Professor ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration. "What do you want, 222? Why are you in my hut?"

"Laundry," 222 said briefly, nodding towards the forgotten basket. "You have fixed transmitter? My Commandant has contacted you?"

"Not yet," the Professor admitted. "I believe, though, that I am very close to doing so. At which point I intend to contact your superiors, to arrange a trade."

"You must not!" 222 blurted out.

"222, we have allowed you a certain measure of freedom because, to be frank, we had very little choice in the matter. I would suggest that you not commit the error of mistaking that leeway for either friendship or trust," he said didactically. "Given the opportunity to reclaim our friend—and I have every intention of seeing to it that such an opportunity does, in fact, arise—we will certainly not be deterred from doing so by any concern for your welfare."

"Eblan! This is not about me!" 222's lips set in a hard line. "Only one reason Commandant would ever return to island—he would be here not to trade prisoners, but to capture the rest of you. I would be bonus, perhaps, but of no real importance. If he realizes that you have top-secret Soviet microtechnology, he will be here, even if he has to swim back. He will have no choice, no?"

The Professor's eyes hardened. "If they have taken even the most cursory of glances at the instrument, they are already aware of the damage. And if the danger from your compatriots is as great as you say, then that transmitter is our best chance of being rescued by _our_ government before yours can make any hostile moves. Get out."

"But Professor—!"

" _Out!_ "

OoOoOoO

* Luchshe – Better

* Eblan – Fool


	6. Chapter 6

Alexei unlocked the door, his heart in his throat. Gilligan was huddled in the corner again, but his head popped up as soon as the guard approached. The Commandant was not with him, so this was not another question-and-don't-answer session, and he didn't have a mess kit in his hands, so it wasn't dinnertime. That pretty much exhausted the list of legitimate reasons for the guard to be in the cell; Gilligan watched him warily. He could think of quite a few non-legitimate reasons for the man's presence, and none of them featured on his list of 'fun ways to spend the afternoon.' If it was afternoon. It might not have been.

"American," Alexei whispered, hunkering down next to him. "Psst—American. You listen, yes?" His English was just barely adequate, no more; he understood it better than he could speak it, which wasn't actually saying all that much. But he tried. "American—is advice. Give up. Give up _now_. Tell Commandant everything. Is bad for you if you do not. Commandant is angry. Bad for you. Much more than this. You must give up!"

Gilligan cocked his head to examine Alexei for a moment. Well, _that_ wasn't any of the things he had expected from this little encounter. Was this some sort of 'good cop, bad cop' maneuver, or was this a genuine attempt at compassion? He decided that it didn't matter, and cleared his throat. "Is kind offer, Comrade," he said, in a voice not quite his own. God knew he'd had enough time to pick up the accent by that point. "Is very kind. But is more going on than I think you—or your Commandant—are aware, no? There are, how you say, wheels within wheels, and I have my orders. But I thank you, my friend. I will not forget your… help. Nor will my superiors." He gave him a cool, slow look, shamelessly lifted from any number of James Bond films, and let just the hint of a supercilious smile cross his face.

Alexei's eyes widened. He scrambled to his feet and just barely arrested his hand mid-salute. He stammered something in rapid, panicky Russian, and bolted for the door.

Gilligan bowed his head again, letting the brim of his cap hide his glittering eyes and grim smile. That, he thought dispassionately, had almost certainly been a very dumb idea. He'd pay for it, one way or another, before they were finished with him. But he was already paying—for what, he wasn't entirely sure, but heck, sometimes, that was just how the cookie crumbled—and chances were that things were only going to get worse whether he mouthed off or not.

For a moment, though, he had been the one in control, and, dear _God_ , had it felt good; it was the first thing that _had_ felt good since the mysterious vanishing pie. And if it came down to it, perhaps muddying the waters just that little bit more would keep the Commandant off-balance enough to leave the other islanders alone. That was pretty much all he cared about anymore. That the others would be all right. He hoped for that with nearly everything he had left in him, with the exception of one tiny, selfish sliver that concentrated on hoping that, when they finally got around to putting a bullet through his skull, it wouldn't hurt very much. Or at least, not for very long.

OoOoOoO

222 chopped pineapples with a single-minded ferocity that would have been more apropos in a surgeon or a serial killer. Mary Ann came by the table with another basketful.

"I needed those sliced, not diced," she said shortly.

He looked up, startled. That was the first time she had spoken to him. "Izvenitye—I mean, I am sorry."

She shrugged. "It's only a pineapple. Not all that important in the greater scheme of things, but saying that you're sorry sure isn't going to fix anything."

He thought about that for a moment. It was not about fruit. "I cannot change what is done," he said quietly.

"No. You can't," she said. Her lip quavered for a moment; she regained control of herself with a visible effort. "You can't change any of it, and I'm never, ever going to forgive you. So why don't you just… just cut up the pineapples and stop talking!"

He let out a breath. "Yes, miss," he said, and started over.

Mary Ann watched him for a moment. Even when he was silent, there was something about him that wasn't quite right. His body language was different—taut as a drawn bowstring—and his eyes were wary, and suspicious, in a way Gilligan's never had been. Paradoxically, that was comforting. It reduced the familiarity of his face somewhat; she thought that, eventually, she could learn to see him as _himself_ instead of an obscene caricature of the friend she had lost. Someday, maybe, it would hurt a little less to see him in Gilligan's place.

A little less, anyhow. A _very_ little less. 222 had torn a gaping wound into their makeshift family, one she didn't know how to begin to heal, and nothing was ever going to be the same. She didn't like him. She would never like him, and she would never trust him, and she would never forgive him, and, she told herself, she didn't have to do any of those things.

But the pineapples did need to be sliced. Dinner did need to be cooked. And she did need to find the strength to balance her grief and keep going, not letting it get the better of her and not collapsing beneath the weight of it all. Gilligan, she thought, would have been the first to understand that. Carefully, deliberately, she swept the rejected diced fruit into a bowl and carried it back to her kitchen, and she skewered the chunks to grill them. It was not what she had intended to prepare, and it was not how she had wanted to do things, and it didn't matter. It was how things had happened, and she couldn't change it now. She kept going, her head held high, and she didn't cry.

OoOoOoO

"He said _what_?!" The Commandant got up, paced. He already knew that the American was an accomplished liar. He had, after all, spent the entirety of his time in custody spinning tales that ranged from the ridiculous to the insane—obviously not believable and just as obviously not intended to be believed. Arrant nonsense and sheer defiance, all in one long-winded package. The cosmonauts who had first encountered the islanders had assured their superiors that his mask of cheerful idiocy was just that—a calculated front for a master spy.

And he had, in turn, _sent_ a master spy to infiltrate and uncover the secrets the cosmonauts had insisted had to be there. That had, in retrospect, been a mistake. Whatever secrets he had or had not found on the island, the fact remained that 222—whose loyalty had always been unwavering— had been subverted inside of forty-eight hours. And he had delivered this man in his stead.

What could the Americans hope to gain by delivering one of their own to certain death? It made no sense.

Unless his boast to Alexei had been, at long last, the truth. That his operation had nothing to do with any American intelligence agency. That he was here, first on the island and now on this ship, as an agent of _Soviet_ intelligence. Which would have explained both 222's inexplicable reluctance to carry out Phase Four, and his subsequent bungling of literally every aspect of the mission. Wheels within wheels…

The Commandant glared at the files on his desk. Meticulously exact transcripts of unproductive interrogations; they proved nothing save that he had been played for a fool. By whom, that was the real question.

OoOoOoO

222 dragged himself wearily to the table, slumped into a seat. It had been another long day, filled with hard work, baking heat, icy glares, and, above all, the loudest silences he'd ever heard. The Skipper walked out of his hut, carrying a gourd decanter. He stopped short when he saw 222 sitting there, glared at him.

222, who had no trouble deciphering his meaning, stood up. "You wish to sit? I will go."

The Skipper shrugged. "Go, stay; I don't care. Either way, shut up."

222 weighed his options, sat back down. The Skipper snagged a bamboo tumbler from a shelf, then crossed back to the table, sat down, and poured himself a drink.

"Ugh—what is _that?"_ It smelled like a cross between a rotting fruit salad and paint thinner. Which, as it happened, wasn't far from the truth.

"Fermented berry juice. The Professor makes it. It's awful."

"Then why drink it?"

"Because it does the job," the Skipper said, and tossed it back with only the slightest of grimaces. The stuff kicked like an Arkansas mule, and he didn't resort to it often. But there weren't exactly a lot of liquor stores in the area, and sometimes a man just plain needed a belt.

"May I?" 222 asked.

The Skipper pressed his lips tightly together, suppressing both a reflexive desire to lash out at the spy, to punish him for daring to ask for luxuries such as alcohol, and a familiar heartwrenching recognition that this truly was not his teetotaling first mate. "Help yourself," he said after a while.

222 retrieved a second tumbler and poured himself a shot. The stuff burned all the way down, and he was fairly sure he could hear his liver screaming in protest, but the American was right. It did the job. They sat in silence for a while.

"The guy had two left feet, and there were times I'd've sworn that if he'd held a candle to one ear, I'd be able to see it flickering out of the other. But loyal as the day is long," the Skipper began.

 _Oh, bozhe moi; not another eulogy. Why don't we go back to you telling me how much you'd like to kill me? I think we'd both be more comfortable with that._ 222 kept his face carefully blank.

"I never did quite figure out what I'd ever done to _earn_ that kind of loyalty," the Skipper told the tabletop. "I know for a fact I didn't reciprocate anywhere near that level. Fact is, the last thing he said to me was that I never listened to him and never would." He raised his eyes, looked straight at 222, and the loathing in his expression was all pointed straight inwards. Perhaps, 222 realized, it always had been. "And he was right, god damn it all. He was _right._ If I'd believed him when he insisted that you were here, none of this would ever have happened. And I have to _live_ with that. For the rest of my life, I have to live with that."

"No, Captain. If you had believed, if you and yours had come hunting me, I would only have killed you all. Was ordered to do so in any case, as soon as I had uncovered your secrets. The moment I was assigned this mission, the moment my superiors came to think that there were secrets to uncover at all, execution or capture were only two possible outcomes. Either mine or yours, I suppose."

"He still went to his death thinking I didn't care."

222 snorted. "Captain, I abandoned my duty and my country because I knew my Commandant did not care what became of me. I ran like scared mouse because I knew this. He ran like deerhound straight back _to_ you because he knew otherwise."

"For all the good it did. I still couldn't be bothered to listen. I'm more to blame for what happened to him than you are!" He glared again. "Which doesn't mean I'm letting you off the hook, Red."

222 was tired of having this conversation. "I make no excuses. I did what I did because I was desperate. Cruel for him and cowardly for me, but I wanted to live. And there was much I did not understand. I did not imagine that you castaways would… care so much."

The Skipper's face hardened. He poured another splash of rotgut into his cup. "Well, now you know. Were it all to do over again, would you still have shanghaied him?"

"I… do not know," 222 said slowly. "I know you wish me to say I am sorry, I was wrong, I am ashamed. And I am sorry. Am ashamed. But even so, captain, I still do not wish to die. I cannot say that, in same situation, I would not make same wrong choice. I do not know that I could be better person than I am."

The Skipper looked at him, his eyes narrow. "That's honest, at least," he said.

"I am _sick_ of lies," 222 said simply. "Am tired of pretending, of having different name each time I begin new mission, of telling different stories to each person I meet. No more lies. Not to you. Not to myself. No more."

OoOoOoO

The door swung open again. Oh, boy; this was going to be a fun one; the Commandant looked like a teakettle on full boil. One look was enough to tell him that something new was in the wind; the Russian didn't even bother entering the room, just stood in the doorway. Borya and Alexei flanked him like a pair of very grim bookends, and, over their shoulders, he caught a glimpse of a few more uniformed goons in the corridor outside.

This was probably it. He tasted bile in the back of his throat, and swallowed it back down. _Sorry, Skipper. I did my best. Hope you guys get rescued soon._

He stood up, squared his shoulders. He didn't fight as they led him out of the cell and down the corridor, but when they reached the open deck, he stopped short. Staring upwards, dazzled by the sea and the sunlight and the sky he hadn't seen in weeks, he seemed to forget the Soviets for a moment. His face was open, wondering and untroubled, suddenly innocent.

Alexei's hand on his arm—not ungentle—jarred him back to the present, and he let himself be propelled forward again. If this was curtains, then it was curtains, but he'd be damned if he'd let these creeps see him sweat. He did not owe them even that much satisfaction, and they weren't going to get it from him.


	7. Chapter 7

They frog-marched him past what felt like the entire crew of the sub, all staring like they were at the zoo. _Take a picture, you rotten jerks. It'll last longer!_ Which… was probably true, actually. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, resolutely not looking back at them, and feverishly wondering if God would be nitpicky about little things like lax church attendance when, after all, the nearest church was all the way back in Honolulu. He thought that was a pretty ironclad excuse, but there were all those Sunday School stories about people fouling up and being smited in retribution. Wait... smited? Was that right? Should that have been 'smitten'? Or 'smote'? There was that one awful story about the kids making fun of Elijah for being bald, and they had all been ripped to pieces by bears. Did taking the mickey out of somebody for being fat fall into the same 'watch out for bears' category? Did being shot count as modern-day smiting? Was this all some sort of divine retribution?

He reined in that train of thought before it could move past 'gibbering nonsense' into 'full-blown hysteria' territory, and reminded himself that he was being calm and brave. He had to be calm and brave; he was representing the Navy, here. He was representing America. He was representing freedom and democracy and Mom's apple pie. He was representing all sorts of nifty things that _weren't_ ten minutes away from having some very definitive ventilation installed in their collective soft bits, and besides, none of those things were _here_ and he was _all alone_ and no one was going to _care_ if he was brave or not, and he was suddenly glad they hadn't fed him in a while, because he had the feeling he'd have spewed it up all over their very well-scrubbed deck and/or their shiny jackboots, and at the rate things were going they'd probably have made him clean it up before they got back to the business of giving him a personal demonstration of Soviet marksmanship.

And that was heading right back towards full-blown hysteria again. No. He clenched his teeth. _I'm real Navy, Skipper, just like you taught me. I'll make you proud._ He would _not_ beg. He would _not_ cry.

The Commandant stopped. Gilligan, still concentrating very hard on how brave he was being, didn't, and ran straight into his back.

"Oof!" the Commandant grunted.

"Whoops. Beg pardon," Gilligan said politely, then mentally smacked himself in the forehead. That wasn't really begging. It didn't count, right? Right?

"Of course," the Commandant said dryly, and rolled his eyes. "In boat. Now!"

Wait, what? He looked up, and sure enough, there was a dinghy all ready to be lowered into the water. Borya was already in the stern seat, examining the outboard motor. He had a pistol holstered at his side. Presumably they were going to shoot him out at sea where he couldn't make a mess on their nice clean decks after all.

That… was actually an improvement. He nodded minutely; at least he'd get a few more minutes on the water, and would not die cooped up in this tin can. There would be sunlight and waves and salt air, and maybe even a seagull to watch. Yes. This was much better. He climbed in, taking the bow seat. The Commandant got in last, and sat amidships. Borya barked something in Russian to Alexei, who saluted, and began to lower the boat. He met Gilligan's eyes once, with a hint of something that might have almost been an apology, then looked quickly away.

The boat hit the water with a splash, and Borya started the motor. The three of them sped away from the sub and into the unknown.

OoOoOoO

222 was gutting fish on the beach and telling himself that there were worse ways to spend a morning when the boat appeared on the horizon. Dropping the fish—and retaining the knife he was using—he darted away, hiding himself in the underbrush. He didn't know who might be in the boat, or why they were there, or what they might want. (And actually, from some of the offhand comments his fellow castaways had made, they did seem to get quite a lot of company, none of it congenial. Himself, emphatically, included.) But no matter who, or what, was in the boat, he could safely assume that it wouldn't be good for him. If they were Americans, he would be arrested as a spy. If they were Soviets, he would be arrested as a traitor. If they were mad scientists, gangsters, or headhunters, or whatever else washed up on the shores of this tropical lunatic asylum, he would be killed for entirely nonpolitical reasons, which would not be especially comforting. Rock and a hard place…

OoOoOoO

The boat was still skipping across the water and he was still alive. He was a bit confused by both of those things. He wasn't _complaining_ , but he was definitely confused. Where the heck were they _going?_ What was the game plan here? What was happening?

Wait… was that an island in the distance? Was that… no, no, it couldn't possibly be… _could_ it?

OoOoOoO

It was.

Carefully, expertly, the Soviet steered the boat into the lagoon and beached it. From sheer force of habit, Gilligan grabbed the painter, hopped nimbly to the shore. Borya, startled by the sudden movement, drew his gun, and Gilligan immediately dropped the line.

"You want to tie up yourself? Go ahead," he said.

"Nyet. Tie," the Commandant said, waving Borya to stand down. "We will retrieve pocket knife. We will retrieve Agent 222. We will retrieve other Americans. And then we will see what is to be seen, yes?"

 _No!_ His hands clenched into fists; the painter was still dangling limply in the water. His mind spun through possibilities—he could run, but he doubted he'd get so much as ten yards away before they shot him. Not good. He could shout and hope that one of the other castaways heard him, or at least that they'd hear the subsequent gunshot. Not a chance; they'd never think that it was a warning and hide. They'd come straight _towards_ the sound on the off chance that it was rescue. Definitely not good. He could cooperate, and try to get them to leave the others alone once they had their nasty little pocket knife and their even nastier Agent 222. Because he'd had _so_ much luck convincing the Commandant of anything. If his friends were counting on him to save them, he was about to let them all down, big time. So what else was new. Why couldn't 222 have just hit him a little harder in the first place and been done with it?

Numb, bitterly exhausted, and defeated, he bent down, retrieved the painter and looped it around a handy branch. Concentrating only on the knot he was tying, because it was about the only thing left in the world that didn't hurt to think about, he almost didn't notice the man hiding in the bush.

Emphasis on the _almost._

" ** _You!_** " He lunged through the bush, tackled 222. The knife went flying, and the two men tussled in the dirt, a blur of red. 222 was, by far, the more skillful fighter, and Gilligan—overwrought, half-healed, underslept, underfed—simply did not have the other man's physical strength. But 222 honestly did not want to kill his counterpart for a second time, and Gilligan was fueled by a rage he could barely contain. Which is to say that they were, to some degree, evenly matched, and the advantage shifted from one to the other so quickly and so often that neither of the onlookers could be certain which was which.

" _STOP!_ " The Commandant's voice split the air; it was authoritative, it was threatening, and it was entirely ignored by both. He growled something under his breath, and gestured to Borya, who waded into the fight and settled it by grabbing one of the men by the collar and throwing him aside, then drawing his pistol. The _click_ as he cocked it was very loud in the sudden silence.

"If I might interrupt this little reunion?" The Commandant sneered. "Now that I have your attention… is perhaps time we should discuss your futures. If I like the answers, one of you might _have_ one."

Two silent men stared back at him, both streaked in dust, with identical sullen expressions.

"Now. One of you is my agent. One of you… is not. I think you both know which one I want, and which one is worthless to me."

222 knew, all right. He knew that the Americans had no secrets. He knew that there was nothing in the sailor's memory that Soviet intelligence could possibly want. He, 222, on the other hand, was still of some value.

Borya knew, as well. 222 was bound for, at best, a show trial and an ignominious death while 'trying to escape.' The American might be a double agent. He might not. But there was at least half a chance that _some_ government would want him alive.

Gilligan just watched. Whoever the Commandant thought he wanted, it probably wasn't him. And it didn't matter, because whatever he thought he wanted from whichever one of them it was, he didn't have it to give, even if he'd wanted to. Fine. He'd already accepted that he was going to die today. All he wanted was two minutes with his double; he had to know if his friends were safe. He _had_ to know. After that the Commandant could shoot whoever he liked.

222 gritted his teeth. It was foolish. It was no more sustainable a strategy now than it had been when this whole farce had begun. It was, at most, a gesture, a theatrical, useless attempt at an apology. But perhaps one last lie would pay for all. "Gosh, you must be nuts," he said in Gilligan's voice. And accent. "What's the big idea coming back here to make more trouble? Haven't you done enough?"

The Commandant looked narrowly at him. "You are Gilligan? You are sure?"

"Well, I'm sure not Elizabeth Taylor!"

The Commandant folded his arms, and turned to Gilligan. "Hmm. And you?"

He shrugged. He could try for the Russian voice again, but what good would that do in the long run? In his own voice, he replied, "Nope. I'm not Elizabeth Taylor either."

The Commandant sighed. "If neither of you are 222, I suspect neither of you are Gilligan, either. Why must you make things so difficult? Now I must bring _both_ of you back to submarine. Well, 222, you will regret this day. It could have been so quick. So painless. Ah, well."

The two near-twins looked at each other, startled.

"Have either of you changed your mind? Are you perhaps Elizabeth Taylor after all?" The Commandant smiled. "Take a moment to think it over." He strode back to the boat, turning his back on them.

Gilligan looked at 222, and his eyes burned. "Are my friends okay?"

"They are all fine," 222 promised. "They are good people."

"You bet they are," Gilligan agreed, a weight lifting from his shoulders. "The best ever."

222 smiled bitterly. Yes. Good people who did not deserve what the Commandant would do to them. He sighed. Once again it seemed he had misread and bungled the situation. What was it about this island? His life had been so straightforward, so clear, before he'd landed here. No longer. He didn't know anymore what was left for him to try, or who he needed to be.

"Psst. We're going to have to run for it," Gilligan hissed. "When I say 'now,' make a hard left, okay? A really, really hard left. And until then, play along!"

"What are you doing?"

"No time!" He cleared his throat. "Commandant!" he shouted, with Borya's thick accent. Turnabout, he thought, was fair play. "Commandant, over here! Prisoners are escaping!"

"Durak! Are you mad?"

"Trust me! Run—and make some noise doing it! Make him follow us!" He dropped back into the lower register. "Commandant, help me! After them!"

Suiting the action to the word, Gilligan spun on his heel and ran, crashing through the underbrush, 222 hot on his heels. The spy had no idea what was going on, except that Gilligan seemed to have a plan. It would probably end with both of them getting shot, but by this stage of the game, that was beginning to seem normal.

The Commandant lumbered after the pair of them, fury increasing with each step and Borya a pace behind him. What had happened to the spy he had trained? This was not merely 222's failure; this reflected even more on the Commandant, and he was not about to let his career be ruined by a turncoat. Siberia was too good for him. Oh, Gilligan would pay; the Americans would pay; 222 would pay most of all, for this black mark on an otherwise spotless record—

" ** _NOW!_** " Gilligan veered to the right; 222 to the left. Their pursuers went straight down as the ground gave way beneath them, and closed itself overhead. Muffled Russian phrases that didn't sound even the least bit friendly wafted upwards.

"Chto eto? Chto proiskhodit?" 222, stunned, could not quite recall any English for a moment.

"D'zat mean… what happened?... Japanese munitions pit. With… trap door on a spring… Left over from the war," Gilligan explained, leaning on a tree to catch his breath as the adrenaline ebbed. Weeks of sitting very still in a very small room, on short rations and with essentially no sleep, didn't exactly improve one's stamina. "Probably… won't hold them for long, but, well, now we've got a little time to figure out what to do next."

222 whistled. "I am impressed," he said. "Nu ti dajosh."

Gilligan scratched his head. "Huh. Your friend said that a few times. Usually right around the time he'd deck me. What's it mean?"

One corner of 222's mouth quirked upwards. "It means you should have been Russian, comrade. You have guts."

"Thanks… I think," Gilligan said. "Come on, we've got to make tracks out of here." He jerked his chin in the vague direction of camp. "Let's go!"

"Why are you helping me?" 222 asked, not budging from the spot.

"Because it wasn't fair," Gilligan said, not even pretending to misunderstand. "They sent you out to look for something that wasn't there. Then they got mad because you didn't find it. It's not fair."

"I would not have done that in your place," 222 admitted.

"Well, nobody wants to believe it, but _I'm not you_ ," Gilligan said. He gave the spy a sardonic, sidelong glance. "Besides, it wasn't right how they were going to throw you under the bus just to save their own hides. I'd sure hate it if someone did that to _me_."

222's head snapped back as the irony struck him, and he laughed, incredulous. "I am beginning to like you, tovarisch!"

Gilligan rolled his eyes. "I'm touched," he said dryly. "Come on; we've really got to get out of here."

"And go where?"

"We'll find my friends. They'll help us figure something out," Gilligan said, leading the way. "We'll all just have to get used to there being two of us, that's all. Maybe you can part your hair on the other side or something so they can tell us apart."

"You are not seriously suggesting that I stay on island with you?" 222 had thought he was past being surprised by this skinny little bundle of contradictions; he found he was wrong. "After all this?"

"You think you're gonna get any better offers?"

222 was a professional, with years of experience at managing his expression, which is why his jaw didn't hit his sternum. "…No, comrade, I do not," he said weakly.

OoOoOoO

* Chto eto?—What is this?

* Chto proiskhodit?—What is going on?

* Nu ti dajosh – You've got nerve. Depending on tone and context, this can be either complimentary or not. In this case, I rather think it was.


	8. Chapter 8

"Hey—um, do you have a name except Agent 222?"

A half shrug. "Of course. Nikolai, Ivan, Sasha, Boris, Pavel… I have had many names. Which do you prefer?"

"Sounds like _you_ prefer 222, huh?"

"It does well enough. Easy to remember, no?"

"I guess so. Nobody uses _my_ whole name, either. But can I ask you something?"

"You just did. Three different somethings," 222 pointed out. "Ask."

"Well… it's kind of stupid. But I was just curious." He took a deep breath, then, very fast, asked, "Did they… I mean, did my friends ever notice that we'd switched places and you were me?"

A rueful smile licked at the corners of 222's mouth. He half shrugged again. "Da. First day, I was locked in bamboo cage by lunchtime, while castaways took turns shouting and threatening dire fates if you were not returned."

He sighed, just a bit, relieved. "Oh. Good. I mean, not 'good that you got thrown in jail,' but I was… well, I was kind of afraid that no one would have noticed. Or that you'd be a better me than I am."

222 shook his head. "Hardly, my friend. To hear others tell it, you would not need boat to go back to mainland—could just walk on water the whole way."

The tips of Gilligan's ears went a bit pink. "Aw, that's just because everyone's always nicer when you're dead."

"Wait." That _had_ to be some sort of American slang he was misunderstanding. "People are… 'always' nice when you are dead? Does this happen _often_?"

Gilligan grinned. "I guess that does sound a little crazy, huh? But, well, yeah; it kind of does. Like, there was this time a year or so back…"

OoOoOoO

"… So I am naked, hiding under bed when her husband comes in. He undresses, gets into the bed, and goes right to sleep; you can understand why his wife was so lonely, no? As soon as I hear him snoring, I take first clothing I can find, scarcely looking at what I am wearing, and sneak out of apartment in undershirt, with his trousers which are eight sizes too big and fastened with belt that was longer than I am tall, and run back to safehouse in her bunny slippers."

Gilligan laughed aloud. "Oh, no! Did you get in trouble?"

"Ha! Trouble?" 222 looked smug. "Comrade, I got _promotion_. Husband was high-ranking diplomat… and hidden in belt buckle was microfiche of top-secret documents!"

"Wow… that was smart."

He shrugged whimsically. "Well, yes, and then again, no. It would have been very smart of me… if I had known _any_ of this ahead of time. But lucky for me, I was able to make Commandant believe I had."

Gilligan shuddered. "Yeah, that's pretty lucky, all right. Your Commandant is a really mean guy. I didn't like him at all."

"No, I am sure you did not," 222 said, sobering. "Was it… very bad?"

222 knew quite well what the Commandant was capable of, and he knew what the other man must have suffered during his incarceration. But Gilligan knew that when _he_ fouled up, he could look forward to a chewing out, and maybe, at most, a quick swat that couldn't hurt a fly, but always with the bone-deep certainty that the Skipper would never, _ever,_ go beyond that, or, more importantly, let anyone else do so, either. That certainty wasn't a luxury 222 had ever had, from the sounds of it. Why hurt him with the truth? "Nah," he said casually. "Nothing much. The food was crummy, and he asked a whole lot of dumb questions, and, yeah, they roughed me up a little, but I gotta be honest; _you_ belted me worse than he did, most of the time."

"Yes. I did. And I am sorry, tovarisch," 222 said, not believing a word of it, but deeply impressed nonetheless. This man truly _should_ have been Russian. "I am sorry for everything."

He sounded sincere. Of course, as the old saying had it, 'once you could fake sincerity, you had it made,' and they were probably taught how to do that on the first day of spy school. But… there was something in his voice, something in his eyes, that rang true, and Gilligan believed him.

"It's okay," Gilligan said, and he meant it. "Just don't do it again, all right?"

222 blinked. That, so far as Gilligan seemed concerned, was that; their fences were duly mended and the subject therefore closed. _It's okay? Don't do it again?_ That was how one responded if a housemate took your last pair of clean socks, or if a child spilled his milk on the tablecloth! Not after betrayal, and certainly not after weeks of what 222 was perfectly well aware must have been hell on earth. "I shall not; you have my word on it," he said solemnly. "If _I_ may now ask question, though?"

"Why not? Everyone else has. Go ahead."

"I am not unfamiliar with the questioning techniques my Commandant favors," 222 said carefully. "I must know—how did you survive? How did you not break?"

Gilligan looked away, and picked up with a length of bamboo. He played with it for a moment, not meeting 222's gaze, looking for the words. "…I don't know, exactly. Maybe it's just that… it wouldn't have helped."

"I do not understand."

The _crack_ of the snapping branch was very loud in the quiet jungle; 222 jumped. Gilligan tossed the shorter part of the cane away. "He said he wanted the truth about us, why we were all here on this island. So I told him the truth. He didn't believe a word of it, and so it just made him mad. He thought there had to be some big secret plot going on, like in a comic book." He broke off another piece, the report sounding almost like a pistol shot, and again threw the shorter segment into the underbrush. "So I told him all the nutty plots I could imagine. Rockets and secret codes and mind control rays. He didn't believe any of those, of course, and he got even madder." _Crack._ Another section gone. "I tried going back to just repeating my name, rank, and serial number. That didn't go over so good, either." _Crack._ "So I stopped talking altogether." He snapped the remaining few inches of stick in two, and looked at them for a moment, then tossed both of them aside. "That's it, really. I didn't actually do anything special. And I… I think I did break. I think they broke me over and over and over. He just didn't believe it when he saw it, or maybe he just didn't like what he got when he did, so he had to keep trying. Which meant that _I_ had to keep trying."

222 nodded slowly. He looked at his double; he had not been lying about his familiarity with the Commandant's preferred techniques, especially the ones that left no outward marks. He had seen them performed. He had used them. He had even experienced some of them, in the course of his training. And he didn't believe for one minute that surviving any of it with wits intact could be considered as 'not actually doing anything special.'

Gilligan looked away for a moment, then, visibly, switched gears, putting the dark thoughts far away. "Anyway, that's all over now. Let's get back to camp, all right? I really want to see my friends, and make sure that they're okay."

 _You mean, you really want to see your friends and make sure that I didn't hurt them_ , 222 thought. "Da. They will be glad to see that _you_ are okay."

OoOoOoOoOoO

As they walked through the jungle, 222 fell back a pace or two, watched Gilligan. When no one else was around, the other man maneuvered through the trees with a sort of unthinking grace that was completely at odds with his usual demeanor. He _fit_ here, somehow, in a way that he, 222, would have never been able to duplicate.

As they drew nearer to the camp, he unconsciously began picking up speed, eager as a puppy, and as he caught sight of the Skipper, he lit up like a searchlight. "Skipper! Hey, Skipper! It's me!"

The Skipper scowled. "What do you want?"

Gilligan blinked. "Well, gosh, Skipper… it's been a long time, you know. It's good to see you…?"

"Not long enough," the Skipper said shortly. "What do you want?"

"…Skipper? It's me, your little buddy. Don't you recognize me?"

"We're back to this sick little game? Get lost, 222. If you're looking for a job to do, I'll find you one. If you're not, get out of here!"

Biting his lip, Gilligan tried to think. "But Skipper—"

"Move it!"

"But Skipper… I'm me!" He flung an arm to where 222 was just emerging from the underbrush. " _He's_ 222!"

The Skipper stared from one man to the other. In shock, he whispered, "Gilli—" His face hardened. "This is a trick. Another spy? Who are you? Agent 223? 224?"

222 glanced at Gilligan's crestfallen face, then back at the Skipper. "I assure you, sir; he is not spy. This truly is your Gilligan."

"Yeah, Skipper! It's me, honest!"

"I'm stumped," the Skipper said. "One of you I know for sure isn't my little buddy; the other one could just as easily be another spy doing a better job of faking it. I don't want to make any mistakes here!"

Gilligan looked incredibly guilty. "Well… there is one way you can know for sure," he said slowly. "But you've got to promise not to get mad, okay?"

The Skipper examined the two men before him—both looking nervous and uncomfortable, both wearing Gilligan's face—and looked to heaven. "Why me?" He shook his head. "Okay, I'll bite. How can I know for sure?"

"Read our minds," said Gilligan.

The Skipper started. "How? You burned the bush with the magic seeds, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah," Gilligan said, and he managed to sound even guiltier than before. " _That_ one. There are, um… a few others. I can show you where to find one of them."

The Skipper scowled, and forgot to be suspicious for a moment. "So all this time, you've been reading our minds without telling us?"

"Heck, no," Gilligan shuddered. "Once was enough. I just happened to notice a few other bushes, here and there, and Ethel really likes them. So I just left them alone, and they left me alone, and I forgot about them."

"Who in blazes is Ethel?"

"A bird. She's really pretty, all bright red. She's got her nest right next to one of the bushes, and she and her husband are always eating the seeds. That was actually why I figured it was safe to try eating them in the first place. I guess birds don't mind having their minds read."

 _Magic seeds? Mind reading? Was that what the Americans were doing out here? Then why is the Skipper surprised?_ 222 set his jaw. Whether or not Gilligan was playing some sort of double game on his comrades, if there really was something mysterious to be found on this island, something as potentially earthshattering as a reliable method of inducing telepathic communication, getting hold of it had just become his first priority. Well, make that his _second_ priority. Not getting shot was still the top of the list.

"Oh, now wait just a minute," the Skipper said. "If you _are_ another spy, you could as easily be feeding me poison. You've had plenty of time to get the story about our little mind-reading fiasco and all these other details out of my little buddy."

Gilligan threw up his hands. "Then what are we going to do? Anything I tell you to try and prove that I'm me would be the same problem! Anything I say, you can just argue that the real me, if I am me, must have told it to the other me, if I am him, and that's the only reason I could know it, whether I'm me or not. Skipper, those stupid seeds are my only chance!"

"We'll just see about that," the Skipper said. "I'm not going to eat anything that I haven't already seen _both_ of you eat first."

Gilligan nodded; that seemed fair. He led them back through the jungle, following paths only he could see, until they came to a patch of scrub that looked pretty much like all the others. This one, however, contained a sprout, perhaps eight or nine inches tall, with a few straggly leaves and a single seed pod. He pulled the plant up by the roots, tossing the denuded stem into the bushes before either of the others could get too close a look at the leaves. With a thumbnail, he split the pod, and shook a single seed into the Skipper's hand, then into 222's, before popping one into his own mouth and shoving the rest into a pocket.

A bright scarlet bird swooped towards him, landing on his shoulder, before launching into a medley of chirps and twitters that sounded for all the world like conversation.

And he responded. "Oh, hiya, Ethel! Yeah, long time, no see," he said casually, and, digging into his pocket again, offered her a seed, too. She took it daintily, then trilled a reply.

222 stared at the bird, and at the man chatting with her; 'Ethel,' it seemed, had no intention of biting _his_ ear. He shook his head, bemused, and ate the seed.

The Skipper's whole face lit up. "Yeah, forget the seeds—you're my little buddy, all right!" True to his word, he flicked the seed into the bushes. "And what in blazes were you thinking, you idiot? Running off and getting yourself captured? Of all the dumb things I've ever seen you do, that takes the cake!"

And that would have been that, if 222 had not heard the thoughts behind the shouting; _I'm glad you're back. I missed you. Thank God you're safe._

And Gilligan just smirked at his captain. "Aw, come on, Skipper—it wasn't my fault! Besides, it was pretty nice having a room to myself again, with no one snoring all night." _I missed you too. It's good to be home._

And the Skipper, grinning fit to split his face clear in two, swept off his cap and—gently—tapped him with it. Very gently. It was a _joke_ , a nonverbal exclamation point. It was a substitute action meant to convey the sense of a hug, a friendly punch in the arm. And it was, in every sense of the word, a mistake.

Because Gilligan didn't react, exactly. No flinching, no cringing, no resigned sighs.

It was worse than that. He just froze dead in his tracks, standing stock still, his face going wooden and his eyes glassy. _This has happened before,_ that expression said. _It will happen again. I can't stop it and I can't escape it. But I don't have to watch while you do whatever it is you're going to do to me._

The Skipper looked at his crewman, then at the hat in his hand, appalled, and suddenly grateful that he was not currently capable of mind-reading. Shoving the cap back on his head, he nudged the younger man, very, very gently. "Hey, look alive," he ordered, trying to sound normal. Trying not to picture what must have happened to make such a reaction into habit. Trying not to notice the irony in the phrase. "Get the lead out. We have a lot to do and not much time to do it in!"

Gilligan blinked, some animation coming back into his face. "Aye aye, sir," he said, and managed an apologetic lip twitch that might almost have qualified as a smile. "Yeah. Let's get moving, right, 222?"

OoOoOoOoOoO

Author's note: The mind-reading seeds are, of course, from the episode 'Seer Gilligan.' The idea that there might have been other bushes on the island is my own, because the idea of destroying the last specimen of a nearly extinct species makes me sad. And yes, Ethel is the bird that bit 222 a few chapters back; I don't know if the seeds induce telepathic abilities in birds or not, or if she was under the influence thereof at the time. It's possible that she just didn't like him.


	9. Chapter 9

"Right. The first thing we've got to do is secure that boat," the Skipper said.

"The Commandant and his guard are still in pit trap," 222 said. "They could be valuable hostages, but it might be safer to simply leave them where they are."

The Skipper made a face. "I can't say I like either idea all that much. On the one hand, keeping them prisoner would be incredibly hard. And on the other, leaving men to starve to death in a hole in the ground is just plain ugly."

222 shrugged. "He will do far worse things to us if he is given the chance. And they will both be carrying firearms."

"And I don't think either of them would think twice about shooting us," Gilligan said. "That guard… the other one was at least a _little_ bit nicer."

"We can decide that later," the Skipper said. "For now, the boat is the first priority. Everything else comes second, and those rotten goons are barely even on the list at all. Let's get moving."

"No. Wait a minute, Skipper," Gilligan said. "One other thing. I'm not going back with them. No matter what happens, I can't go back _._ Don't let them take me again, okay?"

The Skipper grimaced. The mere thought made him sick to his stomach. "Don't talk like that. Of course I'm not letting them take you anywhere! That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

He started away, but Gilligan stopped him, spidery fingers gripping his arm like a metal vise. "I'm not kidding, Skipper," he said quietly. He nodded at the machete that still hung at his captain's belt. "I really mean it. Please _. Don't let them take me again_."

222 put his own hand on his counterpart's shoulder. "Do not fear, my friend. You will not be taken again. We will not allow it." He looked at the Skipper. " _I_ will not allow it."

Gilligan looked at him, then back at the Skipper.

"We lost you once, little buddy," he said, finally. "I never want to go through that again… and I'm not going to _let_ it happen again. That I can promise you."

Gilligan nodded slowly. "Thanks," he said simply.

OoOoOoOoO

The dinghy was right where they had left it; neatly tied to that same branch. The Skipper examined it disbelievingly, every inch and from every angle. "She's in perfect condition," he marveled. "The gas tank is nearly full and everything. We're saved, little buddy! We can go home!"

222 smiled weakly. He wasn't sure whether or not he was included in that 'we,' and even if he was, the United States government had some very definite opinions on the subject of Soviet spies.

The Skipper didn't notice, or didn't care, or both. He was beaming like the midday sun. "Come on, let's go give the others the good news! _All_ the good news; better brace yourself, little buddy. I'll bet the girls are going to be so glad to see you home safe that they'll kiss you till you're weak in the knees. Oh, boy! We're going home! I can't believe it!"

It was Gilligan's turn to smile weakly at that; the Skipper, again, didn't seem to notice. He had, in the space of twenty minutes, been given everything he wanted, and his joy didn't leave much room for anything else, and that included interpreting facial expressions. 222 watched his double, noted the walled-off expression in the sea-blue eyes, and mused that, oddly enough, there was a very good chance that he was the only one who truly understood what turmoil was going on behind the subdued face that was the twin of his own. And, in all probability, vice versa.

OoOoOoOoO

That evening, at Gilligan's insistence, they visited the munitions pit, bringing a bucketful of fruit and a gourd of drinking water for their captives, who were not appreciably grateful.

"Whatever else we do or don't do, we have to bring them some dinner," Gilligan explained. "We can't just leave them hungry and thirsty down there. That's not very nice." _And I didn't like it when they did it to me._

The Skipper set his jaw. "I'm not against feeding them, but I want their weapons safely out of their hands." He looked at the bucket in his hands, then dumped the fruit on the ground. "Hey, down there," he called. He stopped, turned to 222. "They speak English, right?"

"Commandant does. Guard, I do not know for sure," 222 said.

"Yeah, he does. A little bit, at least," Gilligan said. "He took notes during some of the interrogations, and he never had to ask me to repeat anything. I mean, I _did_ repeat myself, a lot, but he never asked me to."

Both the Skipper and 222 winced, but there didn't seem to be much to say to that. Gilligan didn't sound concerned, or self-pitying; it was simply what had happened. Borya spoke, or at least understood, English.

The Skipper just cleared his throat and turned back to the pit. "Hey, you! You've got to be hungry down there. I'm gonna lower a bucket, okay? You put your guns into it— all your guns— and in exchange I'll lower you down some food and water. Otherwise you can just stay hungry for all I care. Is that a deal?"

The spate of Russian that wafted through the trap door did not sound especially friendly. He turned back to 222. "Well? What did he say?"

222 smirked. "He says that your mother—"

The Skipper scowled. "Yeah, I get the picture," he snapped, cutting him off. "Last chance, Red," he shouted. "You want to play ball, or do you want to rot down there? I'm fine with it either way."

There was a long silence. Then, finally, in English, the Commandant asked, "Gilligan is there, yes? And 222, he is there too?"

"Yeah, my little buddy's here. Who else do you think would have insisted that we feed you lousy Commies? It sure wasn't _my_ idea. Are you going to surrender your weapons or not?"

"Very well. Send down bucket."

They all traded glances, deeply uncertain of the wisdom of this plan, then the Skipper took a deep breath and used a stick to prod the release trigger. The doors swung wide, and he deftly used the stick to prop them open. Some ten feet below them, two very irritated men, more than somewhat disheveled from an afternoon spent failing to set themselves free, glared upwards.

Gilligan tied a length of thin vine to the handle of the bucket. "Hi, Commandant," he said quietly. "Just so you know, this vine isn't strong enough to hold a person, so you can't use it to climb out of there. Put the guns in the bucket, and no one will hurt you, okay?" He looped the vine around his hand for security, then lowered the small pail into the cavern.

Borya, at a nod from his Commandant, and with a scowl fierce enough to take off a layer of skin, slowly removed his pistol from the holster at his waist, and placed it in the bucket. The Commandant drew his own handgun, and looked up at Gilligan's impassive face.

"I am trusting you when you say you will not hurt us," he said. "A very generous offer." He grasped the handle of the bucket as he carefully placed his weapon inside… then jerked the vine as hard as he could.

Gilligan, pulled off balance, fell into the pit with a yelp. Neither of the other two men were fast enough on the uptake to catch him.

The Commandant, quick as a striking snake, snatched back his gun and held it to his prisoner's head. "Now, Captain," he gloated. "You will fetch vine that _is_ strong enough to hold a person, and we will climb out of pit. You will cooperate, or we will kill your man, da?"

The Skipper swallowed hard. "Don't hurt him! We'll get you out."

 _Stupid, stupid, stupid… what were we thinking? This place— these people— have gotten to me. Mercy has no place in operations such as these…_ 222 shot the Skipper one quick, anguished look.

The Skipper, looking suddenly old, jerked a length of vine from a nearby tree. "Maybe… maybe if we pull them up and give them back their boat they'll let him go," he mumbled aloud. _I had him safe for, what? Two hours? Three? God, God, this isn't fair! Why are You doing this?_

"They will not," 222 said bluntly, and grabbed for the vine. "Leave them in pit trap. Otherwise the Commandant will execute us all, merely for having seen his failure. He would have anyway; now he is shamed. Has nothing to lose. Gilligan is already as good as dead; the best you can hope for now is to save the rest of your unit."

"Go to Hell, 222. I promised him that they weren't going to get him a second time, and I meant it," the Skipper snapped. An idea struck him. "Hey, Red!" he shouted again. "I've got _your_ man up here. We'll trade, okay?"

The Commandant laughed. "You mean 222? Keep him! I wish you better luck than I had! Rope! Now!"

The Skipper tied the vine to a convenient tree root and dropped the line into the pit; Borya scrambled up to the surface, and immediately pointed his gun directly at the Skipper, who slowly held up his hands in surrender.

The Commandant climbed up next, his weapon also at the ready. He peered back into the pit. "Up," he ordered Gilligan. "Do not make me shoot your friend."

Gilligan shinnied to the top easily enough, and stood at the edge of the trap, mute, passive, and numb with despair. He didn't even flinch as Borya grabbed him roughly by the shoulder.

222 glanced over. _He is finished. He has nothing left to fight with. I must fight for both of us. Can I save these people? Will that atone for having brought this upon them in the first place?_

"Now," the Commandant said, and gestured to Borya. "We will return to the submarine. Bring the other one as well."

Borya smirked, and grabbed 222 with his other hand. "Da, Commandant. What of the fat one?"

The Commandant shrugged. "Once these two are safely in the brig, we will capture the rest of them. But the boat will not carry more than four, and this man would take up the space of at least three. Bring these two back, and see to it that they do not escape. They have caused enough trouble; I want them safely under lock and key before anything else goes wrong. I will remain here until you return with reinforcements; I still need to find the pocket knife, and I'm certain that our friend will be helpful."

The Skipper just stood there, the Commandant's gun aimed unerringly between his shoulder blades, and watched as the guard dragged Gilligan—both Gilligans—away, and he almost wished that the Soviet would shoot him and have it over with.

OoOoOoOoO

Borya had not stopped grinning all the way to the beach. The situation spoke to his somewhat less than pleasant sense of humor, and an afternoon spent in a munitions pit had not left him with any feelings of especial warmth towards either of his companions.

"I'm still not sure which of you is which," he said conversationally, in Russian, as the boat left the lagoon. "Interrogating a pair of twins in two different languages is going to be quite difficult. I'm looking forward to the challenge."

222 rolled his eyes. "You needn't sound quite so excited at the prospect," he replied, also in Russian.

"Well, it will be interesting. A change from the usual routine."

"Don't get your hopes up too high. A rib breaking sounds the same in any language," 222 said grimly.

Gilligan ignored the incomprehensible dialogue in favor of taking in what would probably be his last view of the island. It was even more beautiful than ever before, he thought, and he was vaguely glad that he'd had this chance to say goodbye. He'd had the unexpected gift of a few more hours with the Skipper, in freedom, and he held the memories close to his heart, and deliberately refused to think any further than that.

"You always did think yourself the cleverest man in the room, 222," Borya sneered. "Well, now we know the truth, don't we?"

"You're that sure that I'm 222, then?" 222 snorted. "Anyhow, you wouldn't be the cleverest man in the room even if you were in there alone. You can beat me, you can torture me, you can kill me, and it still won't change the fact that I am an agent and you are a uniformed thug."

"You _were_ an agent. What are you now?"

222 grinned, showing far too many teeth, and snatched Borya's pistol from its holster. "Armed!" he said.


	10. Chapter 10

"Now," 222 said. "Borya; you will not struggle, and I will not shoot you, da? Gilligan. You will tie his hands. Toropit'sya!"

Gilligan looked at the spy, looked at the guard. Both men had beaten him. Bound him. Both had threatened to kill him. One, under circumstances that were dubious at best, had apologized; his sincerity might be considered doubtful. It wasn't much of a basis for trust, and the very fact of his recapture, coming hard on the heels of 222's promise that he would not let such a thing happen, made it even less so.

But it was all he had.

Gilligan untied the painter, and used it to tie Borya's hands securely, then tightened a loop of rope around his torso, pinioning his arms to his sides.

"All set, 222," he said. "He's not getting out of that so fast. Skipper taught me all about how to tie knots."

222 nodded sharply, not lowering the gun. His other hand was on the tiller. "Good," he said.

"So… well, where are we going?" Gilligan asked.

"Back to island," 222 said, sounding surprised. "Did you not want to?"

"Of course _I_ do," Gilligan said. "Just… I wasn't sure you did. I thought you might want to go home. Without the Commandant to mess things up, you could, you know."

222 smiled tightly. "Are you so anxious to return to Soviet custody?"

"No. But you told Skipper I was as good as dead, anyway," Gilligan said flatly. "I didn't think I was going to get a vote."

"You don't," 222 said. "We are not going back to sub. Even if _you_ wish to end up in Siberia, _I_ do not. So we go back to island. And we finish this, one way or another."

Well, that was good. There was another question, though. He wasn't sure he wanted to ask. He wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer. He wasn't sure how the truth could possibly be worse than what he was imagining, though, so he swallowed his pride and cleared his throat.

"I don't want to get too personal, 222, but, well, I'm not the first guy your operation grabbed, right? And you'd help with all the… questions and stuff, right?"

222 nodded grimly. "Yes to both. I have participated in interrogations."

Gilligan nodded. "It's just… I was awake for most of it, so I knew what was going on." _Standing at attention for hours at a time, until he simply collapsed under his own weight. The screamed questions to which he could give no answer that satisfied them. The bucket of cold water._ "The thing is, though… sometimes I'd wake up, and I'd be clean, and shaved, and my clothes would be washed." He looked straight at 222. "I've got to know. What else they would have been doing to me while I was out?"

222 winced. "I could not say with any certainty… but can guess. You are sure you want to know?"

He was pretty sure he didn't. "Yes. I need to know."

"Truth serum, in all likelihood," 222 said. "There are many drugs that can be used to… compel a man to answer questions against his will. Many of these drugs induce almost a trance state. That is probably why you do not remember anything."

"Oh," Gilligan said. "But… if he used the truth drugs, he'd've known that I'm not a spy! He must have known!"

"Or he would simply have thought you so well disciplined that you could resist the drugs," 222 said.

"So if I confessed that I was a spy, that was proof I was a spy. And if I _didn't_ confess, that was even more proof that I really was a spy? That doesn't make any sense!" Gilligan said.

"No," 222 said simply. "It does not."

Gilligan shook his head, flabbergasted at the sheer stupidity of it all. Finally, he just said, "Well, that's completely unfair."

222 nodded. "Agreed, tovarisch. So we go back to island. This time, _neither_ of us are getting any better offers, da?"

"Da," Gilligan said, and he smiled, too, tentative but honest.

"I promised that you would not be taken back to prison, and I keep my promises," 222 said, looking away, momentarily distracted.

A moment was more than enough.

Borya lunged at him. His hands were still tied, his arms pinioned, but he was a great deal bigger than either of the others, and weight counted for something. He used his shoulder to knock 222's gun hand aside, rammed a knee into 222's gut.

222, slightly dazed, dropped both the gun and the tiller, and the two men grappled for a moment. It all went so fast that none of them were ever quite sure how it had happened, but all three of them ended up in the water.

OoOoOoOoO

The Commandant looked at the assembled castaways. The precious microtechnology was safely in his pocket, 222 and the possible (unlikely, but still, barely, possible,) double agent were safely on their way to the brig, there was a distinct chance that he was _not_ going to end up in Siberia after all, and two of his prisoners were extremely attractive. His mood was improving by the second.

"I will be asking some very important questions," he said with a smile. "If your answers are honest and complete, you will have nothing to fear from me."

"What have you done with Gilligan?" the Skipper asked.

"Very little. Yet," the Commandant shrugged. "We'll find out what he knows sooner or later. I am in no hurry."

"What he _knows_? He doesn't know anything! _None_ of us know anything that you could possibly care about!" The Professor's calm was fraying at the edges. "You have your knife. Let us go!"

"You underestimate yourself, Professor," the Commandant said. "If nothing else, you know that we have developed microtechnology that we do not wish the United States to learn about. You probably know a great many other things that would interest us. I cannot afford to let you go." He smiled. "If you are cooperative, it will not be so bad. We are not barbarians."

OoOoOoOoO

Borya, flailing madly, was doing his level best to stay afloat, and was managing it after an inelegant fashion. Both Gilligans, with the dual advantages of strong swimming skills and untied hands, were making for the boat as fast as they could.

222 reached it a stroke or two ahead of his counterpart, and scrambled aboard. Seizing the tiller, he dragged the boat around by main force. "Gilligan!" he shouted. "Toropits'ya! Come aboard!"

Gilligan got a hand on the side of the boat. "We can't just leave him here to drown!"

"Watch me!"

Borya howled something enraged and incoherent, and lunged at Gilligan, wrapping his legs around him, dragging him away from the boat, and forcing him under the water by sheer force of weight. Gilligan struggled, trying to throw him off, but Borya had all the strength of desperation and was twice his size, to boot. The surface was not more than a foot above him, and he could see the sun, almost see the air, so close, so unfairly close, but Borya had him down, his legs locked firmly around his neck and squeezing hard. His mouth and nose filled with water, and everything began going, not dark, not blue, but white, blinding white, brighter than the sunshine, and a harsh thrumming filled his ears, louder and louder…

OoOoOoOoO

The Commandant herded them all into the supply hut, and barred the door. Settling himself into Mr. Howell's deck chair with a mango and a satisfied sigh, he kept one eye on the makeshift prison and the other on the path to the lagoon. Soon enough, he thought to himself, his men would be back with additional boats, and he could put this whole ridiculous affair behind him.

"What are we going to do, Skipper?" Mary Ann asked, with the tiniest catch in her voice.

"I don't know," he admitted bitterly. "The best we can hope, for, as far as I can tell, is that they'll contact the Pentagon and offer to trade us for some of their own captured spies."

"But we're not spies! Why would anyone think we were?"

"How should I know? They've already decided that Gilligan—of all people! Gilligan!—is a spy, and I suppose the rest of us are just collateral damage."

"They knew we were here," the Professor pointed out. "Altering a man to be Gilligan's exact double isn't something they could have done overnight, so they've known about us for a while. And obviously, our own government didn't."

"This is an outrage," Mr. Howell grumbled. "A Howell, accused of espionage. And not even _corporate_ espionage. I've never been so insulted in my life."

"Do you think…" Ginger swallowed. "Do you think they'll be… rough… when they interrogate us? Even us girls?"

"That is always a possibility, I fear," the Professor said gently. "But it may not come to that. Be brave, Ginger. We'll be all right."

OoOoOoO

222, bereft of options, jerked the tiller hard to port. Spun the boat around at full speed.

The bright steel blades of the propeller sliced through the water.

They sliced into the unprotected flesh of Borya's back. Into his neck.

The water went red as he spasmed, letting go his victim, the shock of the attack so great that the pain had no time to intrude on his consciousness, and the boat heeled violently, hurling 222 back into the water with the dying Borya and the semi-conscious Gilligan.

222 dove, hauled Gilligan back to the surface, slapped the bone-white face, frantically trying to bring him around, heedless of Borya's body slipping quietly below the waves, heedless of the boat turning turtle and sinking not five feet away from them.

And when Gilligan sputtered, spewed out a lungful of water and opened dazed eyes to stare at 222, the spy thought that he'd never been so grateful for anything in his life.

Even stranded in the middle of the open sea, with enough blood in the water to attract every shark in the Pacific, even half-drowned and helpless, he was devoutly grateful that his counterpart was alive, and 222 had not yet failed him entirely.

He hooked an arm around Gilligan in a rescuer's grip, and began swimming. After a hundred yards or so, Gilligan began wriggling to get free. "Relax, tovarisch," 222 said soothingly. "You will be fine. Let me get you to shore."

"… Wait, 222…"

"Hush. Catch your breath. We will be safe."

"No, 222. Stop!"

"Nyet. I will get you to your friends."

"But 222—!"

"What is wrong?"

"The island is _that_ way!"

222 stopped swimming, squinted up at the sun, and tried to draw a mental map. "You are certain?"

"Yeah! Look at the way the water's rippling, and the direction of the wind, and the sun. I know these seas, 222! The island is back _there_." Gilligan lifted a hand that only shook a bit, and pointed in a direction forty-five degrees from the one 222 had taken.

222's eyes widened. "Chyort voz'mi… if that is so, what is over this way?"

Gilligan rolled his eyes. "Well, if I knew _that_ , we wouldn't be castaways, would we? I said I know where our island is, not what's nearby. But all the local cannibals have to live _somewhere_ around here."

222 couldn't help himself. After all the rescues, setbacks, re-rescues, re-setbacks, captures, releases, recaptures, re-recaptures, double-crosses, double-double-crosses, and assorted other disasters, the matter of fact declaration that he had been frantically dragging the two of them straight into a cannibal cookpot was too much. He snorted, then laughed.

After a moment Gilligan laughed too. They were both, in all likelihood, doomed, and the Commandant still had the other castaways, and Gilligan could no longer count the number of times he'd been on the verge of death since breakfast, and he was trying not to think about all the different ways he might still be on the verge of death before dinnertime, and they laughed themselves limp and breathless because there was, quite simply, nothing else either of them _could_ do and remain sane.

"Oh, bozhe moi," 222 got out, eventually. "We are quite the pair. Very well, tovarisch. You know these waters; _you_ lead us back to island."

"You got it, 222," Gilligan agreed. "Say, did I ever tell you about the _first_ time I had to swim back to the island from out in the middle of nowhere? See, there was this huge bomb, and we were trying to dismantle it…"

OoOoOoOoOoO

Author's note: If a boat made too sharp a turn at such a high speed, it might actually flip over, especially if someone who didn't really know much about boats was at the tiller… and using a prop as an offensive weapon might well cause it to turn turtle as well. Not that I have any firsthand experience with the latter, thank heavens; just an educated guess. I suspect that, having flipped, it _probably_ wouldn't have sunk quite so dramatically—heck, my first sailing instructor made us turtle the boat on purpose, just so we could learn how to get her back upright afterwards—but I'm chalking that one up to a cross between dramatic necessity and the utter lack of realism that characterizes so much of the original show. I'd be obliged if you'd do the same; there really was no way I could let that boat get back to the island. Spasibo.

* Bozhe moi – Oh, dear

* Chyort voz'mi — Damn it

* Tovarisch — Comrade

* Toropit'sya—Hurry

* Spasibo—Thank you

* Da—Yes

* Nyet—No


	11. Chapter 11

It took just short of forever to get back to the island, partially because they were fighting the currents every stroke of the way, and partially because both of them had been exhausted _before_ they'd started this little adventure. Gilligan kept up a stream of chatter most of the way, which, to 222's complete and utter shock, actually helped him keep alert and focused. Helped quite a bit, in fact. Was that intentional? Hard to say, but once again, 222 realized that either by design, by chance, or by God's inexplicable grace, there was a lot more to Gilligan than appearances would seem to warrant. 222 still could not decide which of the three it was, and he suspected that he never would. But either way, it got them both back to the lagoon, which is all that really mattered.

They dragged each other the last few yards to shore, then collapsed like twin rag dolls, gasping for breath. Gilligan was the first to try to stand, but, then, he was the more motivated. 222, who might have liked a little more time to rest, nevertheless followed suit, and in fact had to help Gilligan to his feet.

"We've got to save my friends," Gilligan said. "Your Commandant's probably got them tied up or something else even more awful. Let's go!"

222 frowned thoughtfully. "Not… yet," he said, and turned towards the bushes. "First I must find something; I know it was somewhere around here."

Gilligan, somehow, had not lost his cap. He wrung it out in a quick, nervous motion, then twisted it in the opposite direction as he shifted his weight from foot to foot like a schoolboy. "Is it that stupid pocket knife? Come on, 222; we can find that later. This is important!"

"Not pocket knife. To hell with pocket knife," 222 snapped, still searching. "Be calm."

"I am being calm! We don't have _time_ for this!"

"We have time. What we do not have is weapon—ah!" 222 brandished the knife he'd been using, either a hundred years ago or that morning, depending on how you counted time. The one Gilligan's frantic tackle had knocked from his hand. " _Now_ we can go."

Gilligan had a few nagging doubts about the efficacy of pitting a single fish-gutting knife against a handgun, but, he reminded himself, _he_ was not an international spy, and there were probably a great many things he did not know about hand to hand combat. Besides, if it made 222 happy, then it was worth it. He just nodded, and turned towards the path back to camp, 222 close at his heels.

OoOoOoOoO

The Commandant, having finished his mango, began desultorily searching the huts; none of the castaways even bothered to protest, not even when he dumped out and examined the contents of a laundry basket containing, among other things, several bits of silk and lace that were not usually intended to be seen in mixed company. Mary Ann blushed furiously, and Ginger gave him her haughtiest glare, but that was all. He seemed a bit disappointed not to get more of a reaction, but he didn't pursue it any further, just kicked the unmentionables aside and began to investigate a tackle box.

Mary Ann turned away from the window and walked to the very back of the hut, where she did not have to watch the Commandant's depredations, and, equally important, where he could not see her face as he rummaged through the scraps and makeshifts of their lives.

And she managed not to gasp when something sharp poked her in the small of her back. She spun around to see what it was, and the light flashed on the very tip of a knife, which was sawing through the tough, braided grass cords that held the wall together. A small section of grass fell away, revealing a pair of sea-blue eyes she had not expected to see again.

Smiling tightly, he continued hacking at the cords. "Shh," he murmured.

She nodded, her heart pounding in her ears, then bit her lip. "Which one are you?"

He gave her an unreadable look, then pulled away another handsbreadth of grass, revealing the mirror image standing beside him. "I'm the one who's getting you out of here," said the first Gilligan.

The other one nodded. "Yeah. He is. And so am I," he said, in precisely the same voice, and with the same grim, wary expression on his pale face.

To her dying day, Mary Ann was never sure which one was which.

At that moment, the Commandant, empty-handed and irritable, emerged from the Howells' hut and saw the two of them. Bellowing what sounded like some very unpleasant Russian imprecations, he charged.

The first Gilligan reached in through the hole and slapped the knife, hilt-first, into Mary Ann's hand. "Get yourselves out! We'll distract him!" Backing away from the supply hut, he shouted, "Hey you! Commandant! Try to catch me! Third time's the charm, right?"

The second one kept pace with him. "Third? Try fourth, or fifth, or hundredth! He couldn't catch a cold, let alone a castaway!"

The two men ran, ducking and weaving through the trees and out of sight, with the Commandant not nearly far enough behind them, as the Professor snatched the knife from Mary Ann's hand and sliced through another strand of cord.

"We've got to work together on this. Gilligan and 222 can't fight him alone. Okay; once we're out, Howell, you take the ladies to the storage cave and stay put. If that lunatic comes back, they'll need protection. Professor, you'll take the lagoon; they might have brought back that boat. I'll go inland; Gilligan might be trying to lead him away from us. None of our guns have any ammo left, but carrying them anyway might slow him down for a second, and we _do_ have the machetes and fish spears," the Skipper ordered. "This has got to end here and now. We're not going to get a third chance."

The Professor tore a large section of grass paneling from the framework by main force. "Got it, Skip," he said briefly. "Beg pardon, Mary Ann, but you're the narrowest…" With no more warning than that, he picked her bodily up and lifted her through the tiny hole in the wall; she ran around the hut and unbarred the door.

The Skipper pushed past her to get to his own hut, returning with the machete once more at his waist and a pistol in either hand. Giving them to the Professor and Mr. Howell, he said, "Let's go get Gilligan back."

*.*.*.*.*.*

222 had memorized a map of the island before he'd ever set foot there, and had learned a good deal about the unmapped details of the terrain since, (usually the hard way,) but it was Gilligan who took the lead. Gilligan, after all, knew every blade of grass, was intimately familiar with each stick and stone, had every inch of this island engraved somewhere in his mind, in his heart. He ran as though he had eyes in his feet, as though the trees themselves stepped out of his way. 222, an imperfect, inadequate copy, simply followed in his wake, trusting that his counterpart knew what he was doing, and followed him up a gently sloping path, one he did not recognize, that spilled them out on a stark plateau high above the churning sea.

There was no way out, except for the path they had taken and the sheer drop into nothing that surrounded them. 222 looked at Gilligan, and nodded slowly. Yes. Gilligan had known exactly what he was doing. Soon enough the Commandant would find them. Three men would stand atop this barren cliff; one, at least, would not leave it. Perhaps two men would climb down that narrow path to the ground, or else only one, or perhaps none at all. 222, bracing himself for the final showdown, found himself smiling a bit. "Has been an honor, tovarisch," he said. "I only wish things could have been different."

"Me too," Gilligan agreed. "But I'm glad they're different now, anyway."

"Da. I am sorry. For everything."

Gilligan never got the chance to reply to that; the Commandant came up the path. In unpracticed unison, one of them broke left, the other right, and each scooped up and threw a rock at him. One hit his torso, the other his knee, but, maddeningly, he didn't fall, and he had the gun, which he aimed unerringly at one of the two Gilligans.

The Commandant cocked the pistol. "You have disappointed me greatly, Agent 222," he said. "You have disappointed your country. No more chances."

He wasn't sure which was which, but it didn't matter any longer. He didn't care. He would kill them both, then complete Phase Four, disposing of the other six, and then, somehow, he would get back to the sub and sail _away_ from this miserable island, and he would never think of it again. Arbitrarily, he trained the gun on the Gilligan on the left, and he fired.

The Skipper, who had already, he thought, been running as fast as he could, found that he had been wrong. There was a gunshot; a few moments later, there was another. Two shots, two enemies, two Gilligans… he was almost afraid to find out who or what he would find when he made it to the scene, and even more afraid to slow down, lest he arrive just that split second too late. He came charging up the incline like the entire Light Brigade, then stumbled to a stop as he reached the peak.

One man—slender, dark haired, dressed in red—was kneeling on the edge of the cliff, looking over the edge, looking distraught. He was alone.

"Gillig—wait, which one are you?"

"I'm me, Skipper," he said, still staring into the surf. "He—222 and the Commandant, they both went over the cliff. He saved my life. It's just me left."

The Skipper hesitated. It was too pat, too perfect; too much the way he wanted things to have happened to seem entirely real. Gilligan exhaled sharply, one huff of painful half-laughter that wasn't quite a sob and wasn't quite not one. "You don't believe me. That's okay; you don't have to take my word for it," he said, digging in a pocket and pulling out the last few, slightly grubby, seeds. He stuck one in his own mouth, proffered the rest. "Here. I'll prove it."

The Skipper looked at him, looked at the utter devastation in his expressive face, and now he was sure that this was his crewman; who else would be mourning for a mortal enemy? "No, little buddy," he said soberly. "I don't need it. I know who you are."

But he took the seed anyway, swallowed it quickly, and concentrated on transmitting his relief, his soul-wrenching gratitude that his friend had been returned to him, had been spared. His affection—love—for a man who was at once friend and comrade, brother and son. He focused on the enormity of his pride in his crewman, his genuinely awed respect for his strength under fire. All the things he would never— _could_ never—say aloud, or even put into words; he was not a man with a particularly extensive emotional vocabulary. But they were true, and he meant them, and he wanted them heard.

And in return, he saw the whole scene through Gilligan's eyes, in a jumble of quick, horrifying images—the two men, mirror images, running in tandem. The Commandant. The gunshot; Gilligan, reflexively, knocking the spy over, out of its path. 222 returning the favor, leaping for his former superior and wrestling the gun from his hand, shooting the Commandant point-blank through the head, mere seconds before the ground crumbled under their feet. Gilligan himself, scrambling to the edge in a doomed attempt to catch him, and helplessly watching a man with his face vanishing among the sharp rocks and churning foam.

"We were getting to be friends, Skipper," he said quietly. "Really. We were. He said I had guts."

"He was right," the Skipper said, looking into the surf. "Didn't need some Commie murderer to tell me that, though."

"Don't call him that," Gilligan said. "He was just… doing what he had to. It wasn't his fault."

"How can you defend him? You'd have been hip-deep in snow by now if he'd had his way!"

The telepathy was fading, but the Skipper got one last burst of images. 222, with a rare unguarded expression on his face. A five-word apology that encompassed a lifetime of regrets. The Commandant's cold, calculated violence; he was a man who would hurt you because he had decided that you should be hurt, for the greater good, which was somehow more terrifying than a blow dealt in anger. The long years 222 had spent under his tutelage, under his command, under the gun.

"Because… because someone had to be on his side. Nobody else was. Nobody else _ever_ was. He didn't have… what I got. He never had anyone like you, or the other castaways. Not ever." Gilligan licked his lip, which was bleeding again. "Someone had to be his friend."

The Skipper took a deep breath, then another. He looped an arm around Gilligan's shoulders. "Well. If he was going to have a friend, he was lucky it was you, that's all. Come on; let's get back to camp and tell the others, okay?"

"Okay, Skipper," Gilligan said softly. He took one last look over the cliff. Nothing. The Commandant was gone. 222 was gone. His captor, tormentor, double, ally, betrayer, foe, friend… they were all gone. The hungry sea had swallowed them; their part of the story was over, and he didn't know anymore what was supposed to happen next. "Let's go home."

OoOoOoOoOoO

The sub, as ordered, remained in position for thirty-six hours. When the Commandant failed to return, either with or without a dark-haired, slightly built young man who might or might not have been a double agent, his second-in-command made the unilateral decision that there was no reason to loiter in the Pacific chasing ghosts and fish stories. They returned to Soviet waters and less quixotic missions. The Commandant, a reasonably useful scapegoat, was widely disparaged as a fool for having wasted time and resources; he was posthumously stripped of his rank and denounced on all sides by former supporters who had no desire to rehash their own parts in the whole ridiculous debacle. Alexei went on to enjoy a relatively peaceful career that at no point involved double agents or endless verses of the Bottles of Beer song. And another agent was given the designation 222, though not the plastic surgery that the original possessor of that code number had endured. Operation Coconut, and everything that went along with it, was deliberately forgotten. And life went on.

OoOoOoOoOoO

Several days later, Gilligan and the Skipper stood in the lagoon, fishing desultorily. By unspoken consensus, they had all gone back to as close an approximation of 'normal' as possible, avoiding the entire subject, but the Skipper was very much on his guard. He hadn't forgotten Gilligan's response to the cap-slap, and he was queasily certain that there was a great deal more to the story of his captivity than Gilligan had told him. He suspected he didn't really want to hear it, and it was obvious that Gilligan had no desire to relive his experiences, but it was still there, the elephant in the room. The Skipper respected his privacy, but he did want it clearly understood that he was there when and if he was wanted. He cleared his throat.

"So… little buddy?"

"Yeah, Skipper? What is it?"

"Do you want to talk about it?" The Skipper rebaited his hook with a bit more attention to detail than the task really warranted.

"Talk about what?"

The Skipper shot him an ' _are you kidding me'_ sort of look.

"…Oh. _That,_ " Gilligan said, reeling in his line. "No, I don't think so, Skipper. Not yet, anyway. Maybe someday. But not now."

"Fair enough," the Skipper said, and cast his line. "You know that none of this was your fault, right? You didn't do anything wrong."

"Yeah, I know," Gilligan said. "I just wish it hadn't happened. I don't like to think about it."

"Can't blame you there. But, hey—you know where I live if you ever _do_ want to talk about it, all right?"

"Thanks, Skipper."

They fished in silence for a few minutes.

"Hey, Skipper?"

"Yeah? What is it?"

 _Lying on the floor, gasping for breath, retching up red-stained water, until one of them—he couldn't see which—hauled him up by his collar, dragged him to his knees, and held the gun to the back of his head. Kneeling there, drenched, freezing, waiting, **waiting** , and his hands were so tightly bound that his fingers had gone numb and the gun didn't waver and he could feel the tears trickling down his cheeks. The tears were so much warmer than the icy water still dripping from his hair, almost hot enough to burn. Waiting, praying that this time, this time, when the gun went off, it would not turn out to be loaded with blanks, please, not again, because nothing mattered anymore, and reality was spinning again, too fast to see, too fast to understand, and nothing was true, nothing was real, nothing except the pain that had swallowed the rest of the world… and the peace that the gun promised. _

_And then the Commandant was kneeling beside him and cupping his chin in his hand, gently, so gently, and asked, sounding so sad, so kind, "Why you are making me do this? Come now, American, why must we be enemies? Talk to me. Let us be—how you say?—buddies, and talk like men."_

 _And that was enough; the world snapped back into place, or as much of it as he needed, anyway. That was perhaps the one word left in the language that had any real meaning, and he clung to it. **I have a buddy, and you're not him**. He looked up. Everything was going dark around the edges, but that didn't matter, because he couldn't really focus his eyes anyway. Pushing words through his raw throat was agonizing, but he rasped, "Eh… eh… eight-sixty… f-f-forty-two…" _

No. The Skipper didn't need to know about any of that. He would never need to know about that. As of right now, none of that had ever happened. It was far better forgotten.

"I, um… I think you've got a bite."

OoOoOoOoOoO

It might have interested certain Soviet intelligence operatives to know that, not long after Operation Coconut had been so abruptly, quietly, and _definitively_ shelved, a young man, half-dead from exposure and thirst, was found clinging to a piece of driftwood in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He explained, in a flawless east coast American accent, that he was an amateur sailor, vacationing in the tropics, who had somewhat overestimated his own abilities, and he gave his name as Boris Peterson. Once safely on shore, he retrieved a cache of money and a set of expertly forged identity documents in that name that were, it must be admitted, technically government property, or would have been, if his superiors had known they existed. He felt entitled to them, though; the agency would never miss it, and anyway, it was still coming out ahead, as he took them in lieu of the combat pay he would not be collecting for this disaster of a mission.

The newly dubbed Boris used some of the cash to acquire a plane ticket back to the mainland, a haircut, and a few changes of clothing that didn't include either rugby shirts or Dixie-cup hats. (He might have ended up with Gilligan's face, but he retained his own fashion sense. Bozhe moi—if he never had to see these clothes again, it would be too soon!) He moved to Brooklyn, where he promptly found himself an apartment, a job, and a diner that served decent borscht. He also enrolled himself in night school, with the intention of studying medicine, and got on with his life.

But not before seeing to it that a message was delivered to the Secretary of the Navy via a series of untraceable dead drops, in a code he knew the CIA had long since cracked. It read, in part: _The pleasure craft SS Minnow, wrecked in the south Pacific some years ago, was not without survivors, including two Naval veterans. They can be located on an uncharted island at the following coordinates._ He was a man who paid his debts.

The Secretary might even have done something about it if he had not chanced to spill his coffee over the note before reading it, and in the fracas, the now-illegible note was thrown away.

Fin.


End file.
